The African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” underlines just how harmful the closure of schools has been to Britain’s young people. Solitary learning with a laptop on the kitchen table, with or without direct parental supervision, cuts out many of the key benefits of school attendance – a modern equivalent of village life. Education has never been seen more clearly as a holistic experience, not just filling a child’s head with facts but forming the whole personality by interaction with peers, teachers and other adults, and by fitting into a structured and caring environment with a culture, rules and a timetable of its own.

There is intense concern among educational psychologists that the mental health of an entire cohort of children is seriously at risk. Another epidemic is at hand, this time of disturbed child behaviour – depression, anxiety, self-harm, personality disorders – which is likely to make family life far more turbulent and difficult for millions of children and their parents, perhaps for years to come. Where is the vaccine for that?