It will be weeks – perhaps months, or even years – before it becomes apparent how much damage to young psyches has been done by the five months during which schools have been closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Some emotional turbulence is inevitable, but that only emphasises how important it is that schools begin to function again. Teachers will bear the brunt of that, and their remedial skills – not to mention their patience – will be tested to the limit. Schooling is not just about classroom learning: it is a socialising and civilising process, coping with life and with the demands of many others, in a more ordered space than the family home. Many children will find the readjustment difficult.

The degree of harm caused by educational deprivation since March, when schools were closed by government decree, correlates with other deprivations, for instance in housing and employment. Those who were already least able to cope, and therefore who needed their school most, have suffered most. This was well illustrated by the row over payments in lieu of school meals. If they had not continued over the summer, many children from poorer households would have gone hungry. That stark glimpse into a Britain of “two nations” needs to be inscribed on every politician’s soul.