Patrick Timms: Blame the unions, not teachers themselves, if our schools don’t re-open

With a ten-year background working in the education sector, I know that teachers are some of the most dedicated people you will ever meet.

Daniel Hannan: Politicians can’t win. When they don’t give us what we want, we protest. And when they then do, we carry on.

These are the same elected representatives the whom we insisted should “step back and trust the professionals”.

As a leading epidemiologist says school closures may have been a “mistake”, did the decision lack adequate debate?

Mark Woolhouse, who is a member of SAGE, has suggested that children do not transmit the virus in the same way as adults.

The Government toughens up on school reopenings

This week Gavin Williamson said that parents would be fined if they do not send their children back to school. But Labour is not happy.

The big speech Johnson makes next week should be about education

Parents need to be persuaded to send their children back to school – and until that happens life chances will be blighted and economic growth lessened.

Robert Halfon: The Government was wise to give way to Rashford. Now let him head up the Social Mobility Commission.

Plus: vision from the top for left-behind pupils, a National Education Broadcasting Service, and Alan Turing summer schools.

Tim Clark: Ministers must take the time to find a safe way to reopen schools

Not only would doing otherwise expose teachers and pupils to unacceptable risk, but the political backlash could be immense.

Stephen James: As a state school teacher, I want to spell it out. The teaching unions don’t speak for me.

Instead of finding solutions to problems, the NEU finds problems in solutions – for example, telling its members not to engage with lessons via the internet.

Mark Lehain: The rivalries and Corbynism that are driving the biggest education union’s extremist stance on school reopenings

I’m a former union rep myself – and am finding that schools, empowered by the Gove reforms, are quietly getting on with preparations,

School closures, Labour, teaching unions – and why Starmer himself should be in the dock

Does he back the National Education Union’s advice to its members not even to engage on a possible June 1 re-opening?

Starmer – and how the Coronavirus is giving old-fashioned class politics a new lease of life

Johnson will be well aware of this – and will be more concerned about heading Labour’s leader off than by the restive Tory press.

The economy and the virus. Tear up the rulebook – we need Big State Government on a scale unknown in modern times.

The implications of the crisis are such that Johnson and Sunak need not so much to think outside the box as to trample it to tatters altogether.

Ben Bradley: Let’s stop forcing all pupils down an academic path – and free some instead to prepare for the world of work

Both kinds of school have a place, and more besides. It needs to be a choice. Education is not ‘one-size fits all’, it’s ‘horses for courses’.

Rachel Wolf: Where education reform has succeeded – and where it has failed

The parents we have most consistently let down are those we have not empowered to demand more for their children. That must change.

Robert Halfon: Skills, social justice, standards, and support for teachers. A four-part manifesto for the new Prime Minister.

By extending the ladder of opportunity to those who currently lack it, e can ensure the next generation climbs it.