The prime minister is “out of touch” on the reality of schools’ difficulties in accessing coronavirus testing, the House of Commons heard today.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said Boris Johnson had made a “poor defence” of the government’s policy on testing capacity around school reopenings. 

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“Three weeks ago, millions of children went back to school. That’s a good thing. Then the inevitable happened. Kids get coughs, bugs, flu - that’s what happens, it’s in the job description, but there’s no effective system in place to deal with it,” Sir Keir said.

“Many can’t get tests quickly, schools are allocated only 10 tests, many wait days for the results - the outcome is obvious. Child and siblings off school; mum, dad or carer off work; and in some cases all year groups off school. How on Earth did we get into this mess?”

Coronavirus: Schools struggling to get tests

The prime minister replied: “We are doing our level best to get every child a test who has symptoms, and, further to that, thanks to the efforts of teachers in this country, of parents, pupils, 99.9 per cent of our schools are now back.”

Sir Keir said: “Such a poor defence. The point isn’t whether the children have got Covid, it’s that they’ve got Covid symptoms, and then they’re off school.

“The government’s own department shows that one in eight children are off school this week. That disrupts their education, whether it’s Covid symptoms or other symptoms is nothing to the point - if the prime minister doesn’t see that, he’s really out of touch with families and what they’re going through in school - day in, day out - in the last few weeks.”

This week, teachers reported being turned away from testing centres and told by staff that they were not “key workers”.

And today school staff said they were not being told which of their pupils had tested positive for coronavirus - a situation one union head described as “completely unsettling”.