Pupils and teachers are looking forward to going back to school.

All children can return to full education today (Monday).

When the government removed social distancing requirements last week, plans to open with either two-metre or one-metre distancing were ripped up.

Schools had been planning a more gradual return to normal, with some year groups returning before others.

Again, those plans proved to be unnecessary.

Ballakermeen High School’s headteacher Adrianne Burnett said: ’I’m so excited about the students coming back into school.

’Ballakermeen without children is just a building and while we have loved having our hub children in because we’ve got to know them really well, this school was built to have lots of students in.

’This is my 40th year in education. I’ve not known anything like it [the Covid-19 pandemic]. The one thing it has shown to me though is that teachers are heroes.’

She talked about the extra support given by staff members including making packed lunches for students and thanked the school’s parents for the work they have done over lockdown.

Now the school will have to ’reconnect’ with its students, she said, and it will have to ’acknowledge what’s happened to them in their life because school has always been a constant and then suddenly, literally a day’s notice, that was taken away from them’.

She added: ’We just have to reassure our students that the gaps in learning, it doesn’t matter what you did at home or how well you were able to get on with work, when you come back again we’re going to start again.’