BORIS JOHNSON and his government have already failed in their attempt to restart all primary schools on a single common start date of June 1 and with all three chosen groups – reception, year one and year six.

For a safe return, to start with year six would have been better. So would starting it in a test area or areas where the R number (the number of people someone with the virus could infect) is well below one.

Most importantly, it would have been better to propose a start date for a phased return after the measures for tracking and testing were fully established and had been tested for reliability.

It is good that local authorities and schools where they have concerns have already said that they will not support a return on an arbitrary date. Timings will be decided by risk assessments being conducted and agreed by the school’s management and staff trade unions.

If there has not been a risk assessment agreed by their unions, they do not have to enter the premises under the Health and Safety Act and are advised by their unions not to enter until they have been completed to the satisfaction of the members’ unions.

Thankfully, union membership has greatly increased and there has also been a massive increase in new union reps and health and safety reps and also members’ active involvement through Zoom meetings and social media.

Crucial though will be the face and nature of education in the future and the lives of pupils and staff.

In London free travel for children has already been put at risk (return to school but pay for it). A leaked report proposing a pay freeze has been exposed. Making the working class pay for the crisis is already their line.

Johnson has said that there will not be a return to austerity for us (it was always a time of plenty for the rich and especially the super rich). Can he be trusted to keep to this? From past experience, unfortunately not. What will happen will be down to what we do.

For teachers, support staff and others involved in education, we need a strategy. Not even a bounce back but a bounce forward.

We need to start discussing and debating our plan for the future. Education once had the three Rs. Recently education unions have formulated the five tests for a safe return.

What we will now need, I suggest, are the five Rs before we return to school:

Retain - any good initiative developed during the crisis

Remove – Ofsted, SATs, baseline assessments

Restore – youth clubs, night schools, local authority control of schools, local authority supply of pools

Rebuild – a once in a generation school building, rebuilding and upgrading plan and

Reinvent – our unions and how they operate, more professional unity, more social movement trade unions, more grassroots communications and involvement

These are just a few suggestions. We can discuss how we populate these categories, how we prioritise, how we achieve them, and how there must be no going back but forward to a new and better future.

Hank Roberts is a member of the NEU executive. He writes here in a personal capacity.