The suggestion pupils have lessons one-week-on, one-week-off is madness. Schools are not oil rigs

We’re all accustomed to the Job Share and the Car Share - but now meet the Class Share: the one-week-on, one-week-off model proposed for schools in case of a Covid-19 resurgence.

Class Shares mean children will be in school every other week, taught by their parents at home the alternate five days.

The idea, one of many floated by the teaching unions, has been touted as a solution to the need for social distancing. Many schools will simply be unable to keep running normally if Government regulations say they need to keep pupils a minimum of one metre away from each other at all times.

And that’s if the children are minded to comply; throw in a few unruly year groups of teens and schools would be stymied by any regulations around space. So far, so realistic.

But still - one week on, one week off? That’s clearly a schoolboy-sized error.

The only parents who could hope to work with such a system would be those whose jobs worked in the same pattern. Offshore drill workers, perhaps? Or air traffic controllers. Some high-end nannies work on a week by week, 24-7-availability rota for their Russian oligarch bosses..

The rest of us however, unless we were to be offered matching employment-furlough terms through some new Sunak scheme, would be completely snookered.

I cannot think of one person whose employer - be they law firms, accountants, retail - would be relaxed about seeing them on a week by week basis.

Even those teachers who have children themselves would be sunk. As would any school administrator, cleaner, caretaker or secretary who happened to be a parent.

Making it even more difficult would be the random nature and length of this fortnightly pattern: what if you did have such a flexible job only for the school to send your child home on the week you had to work?

Forget actual job share too - a local lockdown would mean anyone you paired up with would need the same weeks on and off. And to change that would be a bureaucratic nightmare.

We haven’t even factored in quarantine yet. Imagine your school goes into Class Sharing but your own son or daughter comes home with a persistent cough. By the time they have recovered and quarantined, they will have lost their place on the Class rota and someone else will be sitting at their desk.

Speaking of which, how much deep cleaning will have to go on to keep these two cohorts safe from each other?

Will staff be bundled into A and B teams as well? Surely the same set of teachers, assistants, cleaners and administrators cannot teach all the children. Will schools need to appoint joint heads in case one has to stay home?

Of course - and this should go without saying - we all want teachers to feel and to be safe as should all the staff within schools. And for all the surveys that come and go almost daily predicting how much children may or may not pass the virus around, no one wishes the mildest dose of Covid-19 on them either.

We simply don’t know enough about the disease yet to suggest that herd immunity in the classroom is acceptable. Chicken pox, this Coronavirus is not.

But education is not merely a way to keep the kids busy while we toil and spin, it is a fundamental right for every child in the country.

So whilst I agree that we need clear plans (A, B and even C) for how schools can go back safely, one thing is certain. Class sharing should not be one of those options. It may tick some boxes and squeeze into the guidelines.

But children need consistency and routine in education as in all things . And so do their poor parents.