Given Covid crisis, school holidays could be extended to the end of January to enable teachers to be vaccinated – John McLellan

The light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel may well be intensifying, but for thousands of school pupils, the vaccine programme is not going to help make up for lost time in the classroom.

Schools could return a month later than usual and stay open into July, suggests John McLellan (Picture: Danny Lawson/PA)

The Christmas holiday has already been extended and the “blended” teaching system, with video links and home learning which has proved to be no learning at all for far too many pupils, will be back in place for the start of the new term from January 18.

Already the exams have been cancelled so at least that doubt is out the way, but with the inoculation programme set to be accelerated, there could be another way.

Perhaps the holiday could be extended further to the end of January and the summer term extended into July, which clearly isn’t impossible because the summer term in England has gone on til August for decades, giving Scottish families the benefit of cheaper package holidays as a result.

So just this year, why not? To save £200 on a week in Majorca you can’t book anyway?

Teachers could be added to the list of key workers to be vaccinated and there might be a chance that classrooms could be completely safe by February. What a result that would be.

Perhaps the Educational Institute of Scotland should campaign for an accelerated teacher vaccine programme in return for adding two or three weeks to the summer term. The summer holiday would be shorter, but the children come first and it’s surely worth serious discussion.

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