I've been out of the conversation on schools despite a background in education. From a persnal point of view, as someone who would have to organise the logistics, I would g=have wanted to defer the return as long as possible!
But here goes - IMO
The return on June 1st is being planned far more with a parental return to work in mind than with education of children. Only half a class can be accommodated inside a classroom, and there's no guarantee that the weather will alow outside classes, nor that parents will send their children back anyway. A lot of disorganisation will be inevitable, learning will be patchy and online teaching will become perfunctory as teachers will be occupied full-time in school. I'm not convinced that the cause of education will be advanced.
The return will be good for the children early years where attending school has a major social function as part of the education. In older years and outside families who value education, there will also have been an educational deficit (I speak from experience in trying some years ago to support an inner city project for such). So school opening is good for them, too, in principle. But institute compulsory attendance for anyone unable or unwilling to complete Internet assignments?
School re-opening is not good for teachers. There's been minimal discussion of PPE protection and with self-isolation regulations still in force there will be regular staff absences and classes sent home for lack of cover. Under existing legislation schools (or any other employer) who fails to provide safety at work is committing a criminal offence. Nor is re-opening good for parents with serious health issues when their children bring Covid home.
The unions have been somewhat hysterical, though I can't think of any other way in which this government might be persuaded to listen. They and the government need to concentrate on criteria which will enable schools to open instead of trading insults which have varied from smug to wild. Wait for the reaction when the first teacher after resumption dies of Covid, though!
Comparisons with other countries are useful up to a point. The UK went into lockdown some weeks after other countries so we shouldn't expect to open as quickly as some have done. And because lockdown was late, our situation is worse than countries which acted promptly. Denmark has been quoted above as an example of successful re-opening; bi=ut taking figures from previous posts, they re-opened with 10 deaths/day in a population of 6m; that scales to 100 deaths per day in a population of approx 60m - last time I heard a figure the UK death rate was 468 per day.
So if I had to decide as a government minister, I'd actually talk to teachers and their representatives about specific criteria, aim at a re-opening in stages by age and location, think that I was doing well if a significant number of schools had re-opened this term, and resist pressure from the Cabinet Office to go any faster.
War does not determine who is right, only who is left - Bertrand Russell
Chichester 12m asl