With less than a month to go before the date when schools are due to reopen, there seem to be mounting panic among the stakeholders involved.

Time is short and there are still many issues to be discussed.

So far, it would seem, what discussion there has been was between the minister and the trade unions and vice-versa.

But, I will argue, things are not so simple and the discussion must be widened and deepened and extended to more than the immediate interlocutors.

Every year, under all governments, we are used to see the first days of September as a general rush as everybody comes back from the beach or from abroad, classes are made ready, parents buy uniforms and books and children relish the prospect of meeting friends anew.

But this year is different, completely different and the issues are far more serious.

For starters, we are not out of the pandemic. On the contrary, there has been a resurgence what with imported cases and cases spread out in the community, within families and within groups of friends.

We are seeing the same phenomenon also in other countries, and this also helps in finding solutions for it’s not as if we are facing the problem on our own. Other countries have gone ahead and reopened the schools but cut down on class sizes

and enforced distancing. We cannot reopen just with a so-called guarantee that nothing happened at Skola Sajf so it’s OK to go ahead and reopen.

We have no idea how much our children have lost since March. I just note that at the beginning there was a rush of children drawing on Covid and their impressions of it and sticking these drawings to windows and balconies. Then not any more.

We used to hear about children doing homework at home, then no more. Maybe the lessons continued. It’s difficult for non-teacher parents to find the time and to be able to step in instead of teachers.

From surveys carried out abroad, it’s been proved most children did not touch their books after March. I do not know if a similar survey has been carried out here though it would have been logical.

Staying at home harms children, though the home-schooling brigade would disagree. Children miss out on the salutary impacts of meeting other children and socialising.

Then one must turn schooling into a pleasant experience. A European survey, according to Friday's Guardian, has shown that British schoolchildren are the most unhappy in Europe with Malta a close second. The reason? The insistence on passing exams.

Such children would be coming in from six glorious months of life at home with no uniform, no bells and no homework to

school life as we all remember, plus waking up early to catch the van.

Unrelated to the Covid present, I say there is much to discuss about education and this debate has long been absent in our society. The controversies of the past days have seen the dark side of this – a big behemoth of a government hogging all corners and dictating its decisions.

We have allowed this to creep up on us that we think it’s normal. But up to just a few years ago, there was a healthy plurality in educational systems. I have never understood why standardisation has replaced plurality.

Even here, why should all schools have to keep to the same protocols if they can and are willing to do things their way? Perhaps they want to open earlier. Perhaps they can restructure classes in a way the other schools cannot.

I foresee huge controversies coming our way. It’s already late in the day. Teachers and other educational employees are right to resist rules that could place them at risk.

But children, the unheard factor in all this, are right to expect their time at school to be a pleasureable experience.

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