The proposed return date for schools in Northern Ireland is too late, yet the matter is not even being properly debated

Easyjet is resuming flights from June, which is vital given NI need for air connectivity.

Car parks in forests and country parks reopen next week. Markets in Ballymena, Larne and Carrickfergus will also open, for sale of essential items such as food. And schools are pencilled to return in the third week of August.

This is all welcome, albeit slow in pace and modest in scope. One painfully slow example of re-openings is schools.

Stormont has politically failed to reflect the deep distress of many parents who feel they have no respite from looking after their children for up what will now be six months.

Not only that, but the late August return might rotate, so it could be November before there is a semblance of normality.

In the Republic, the chief executive of the National Parents’ Council — Primary has asked the government there to consider the partial reopening of schools in June.

The World Health Organisation Special Envoy on Covid-19 has also said it is now time to think about re-opening schools there. Professor David Nabarro said keeping children home from school for too long can cause long-term damage to their development. “You have to balance the risk,” he said.

How is that it that there is almost no pressure in NI for the same?

How is it that these elementary points are rarely made?

And why did Stormont just accept with almost no complaint from anyone other than Jim Allister the idea that Northern Ireland’s return had to tally with the Republic’s late return, in the autumn, rather than with England’s next month?

This is all the more troubling given that MLAs have approved a generous retrospective pay deal for teachers at a time of financial crisis and urgent virus funding priorities.

Also, given the way disadvantaged children suffer most, such as many Protestant boys, closure is fuelling inequality.

Yet outside this newspaper the idea that schools are coming back too late is barely even debated.

This urgently needs to change.

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