While some primary schools started admitting more pupils this week, Castle and Marlwood schools remain open only for the children of key workers.

Although there is the aim of 'some face-to-face support' for year 10 and 12 students, details of this remain unclear and the majority of pupils will not return this academic year.

In a letter to parents last month Will Roberts, CEO of CSET - the multi academy trust running both schools - said: "We have been told for several days now that the publication of additional guidance is imminent, but at the time of writing it has not yet materialised.

Things will not be back to normal in September either, with distance learning set to be a part of the schools' foreseeable future.

Mr Roberts said: " It's clear now that this is going to be a long, slow return to the kind of education we are used to providing.

"I've been working with headteachers on planning for September, and it's already apparent that next academic year is going to need to look very different to usual.

"The ‘bubble’ concept is a sensible approach to reducing the risk of the virus spreading, but requires considerable re-planning of how we work, even more so in secondary schools than in primaries. It also has an obvious but important consequence, in that we will not have enough classrooms or staff to provide a full-time education to all students on this model.

"The central purpose of schools is to educate children, but in doing so, we also provide childcare, which is especially critical to parents of younger children. If education is going to be rationed due to social distancing, the government will need to decide where the balance of priorities lies between education and childcare.

"Home-learning will be an important feature of education for some time to come, and we will need to continually develop and refine our approach to this."

At Marlwood they have been trialling the use of 'recorded teacher guidance and instruction' in subjects such as English, French, geography and history.

Staff have also been prepared for Google Classroom becoming the main platform for students

engaging with the work set by all teachers.