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Ministers have been urged to stop being so ‘dogmatic’ about their management of COVID-19 in schools after a week of chaos caused by a number of last-minute reversals.

School leaders have yet again been left angry and frustrated after prime minister Boris Johnson acted to close schools to the majority of pupils just 48 hours after insisting that they were safe to re-open.

There is further incredulity at the government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic after the Department for Education (DfE) allowed millions of primary school pupils to head back into school on Monday, January 4, only to then tell them to stay home amid fears over the quickening spread of new variant of the virus.

Schools are now to remain closed until at least mid-February to all but vulnerable pupils and the children of key workers, with remote learning once again kicking in for the majority of pupils.

The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) acknowledged that the situation was ‘fast-moving’, but said that part of the problem is that ministers keep ‘boxing themselves into a corner by being so dogmatic about their plans’ – even as those plans are ‘obviously unravelling’.