The idea that having anything close to 100 per cent of pupils in schools at the same time by August is “simply fantasy”, MSPs were told today.

First minister Nicola Sturgeon said yesterday that the two-metre social distancing rules could be eased, but the likely impact of that was played down today.

Stephen McCabe, children and young people spokesperson for local authorities body Cosla, said that, with any social distancing in place, “I don’t think we can get anywhere close to 100%”; with the current two-metre social distancing, he added, it was “impossible”.

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Mr McCabe was speaking at today’s meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee, where he was asked about Northern Ireland’s plan to reduce social distancing to one metre.

He stressed that there been no change to the two-metre rule yet in Scotland, so planning has not changed. He added that while “there may be limited scenario planning” for different social distancing rules, “it’s difficult to plan for things that might happen”.

Mr McCabe also said that people would have been surprised to hear “blended learning” plans described as a “contingency” this week, and feels there may be “a bit of demotivation on the back of that”.

Committee member Alex Neil, an SNP MSP and former government minister, said the idea that some pupils may only be in school for one and a half days a week from August was “just not acceptable”. He called for “a bit of imagination” to get schools open to more pupils more often by, for example, using old school and other buildings and by setting up supervised “homework hubs”.

The committee also heard from Carrie Lindsay, education and children’s services director in Fife and president of education directors’ body ADES, who said the debate around blended learning was often not helpful because it focuses on quantity of time at school - 50 per cent is often the benchmark - rather than quality.

She recalled the enormous challenge of relocating just one school after a fire last year, and warned that using old and unused buildings is not as simple as some are making it sound.

Mr McCabe said that there are about 2,500 schools in Scotland, and that to imagine that you could replicate that capacity with some “superhuman” effort involving use of other buildings is “simply fantasy”.

He added that there are not the number of public buildings out there that people might think, as a result, for example, of austerity and many churches closing.

Meanwhile, the outgoing president of the EIS teaching union has said that teachers must be protected from “unreasonable” workload generated by blended learning.

Bill Ramsay used his final speech as president to warn that teachers are already having to work longer hours due to the government’s plan for blended learning, the combination of home learning and in-school teaching.

He argues that the next few months “will be among the most crucial” in the union’s history as schools return amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Ramsay also said that the Covid-19 crisis should not force a return to government austerity, comparing the situation to the aftermath of the Second World War.

“We are already being told that the post-Covid world will be one of austerity. It need not be. It must not be,” he said.

“The post-Covid world must be one of regeneration, as it was in 1945: in Scotland; in the UK; in Europe; in North America; and in other countries across the world.

“It is this 1945 economic legacy of positive transformational change that we and all other trade unions everywhere need to promote in 2020.”