Have ministers really thought through their back to school strategy?

There’s something rather ominous about a government minister waving around the results of a yet-to-be-published study to underline that they’ve definitely got a tricky policy nailed down. Over the weekend, we saw the Prime Minister and Education Secretary both insisting that it would be fine for English schools to reopen in September because a piece of research by Public Health England showed that there was little evidence the virus is transmitted at school. But the Times today reports that officials working on the study are uncomfortable with the way their findings have been represented by ministers and that older children may spread the virus in the same way as adults do.

It is almost as though ministers are so keen to prove that their plans will definitely work that they haven’t yet really checked that their plans will, er, really work. We’ve seen a similarly cavalier approach to the government’s track and trace scheme, which scientists argue is essential if schools are to stay open this autumn.