One of the many frustrations of this wretched pandemic is that we are still looped into arguments that began 21 months ago about what control measures should be in place in our schools and colleges.

In customary fashion, the Department for Education made a last-minute announcement on the Sunday before the start of term recommending that students in Year 7 and above should wear face masks in classrooms, and about the provision of 7,000 additional air cleaning units.

This came in response to the surge in Omicron cases and the impending feeling of a calamitous shortage of teachers.

Cue a robotically familiar frenzy of controversy and confusion.

More unhelpful debate about Covid and schools 

First, face masks. Some critics of this policy argue that it is a barrier to communication in the classroom, others question its effectiveness, while those on the wilder fringes of naysaying appear to regard it as some sort of breach of human rights.

Of course, there can be little doubt about it being a barrier to communication. That just seems obvious. Most teaching has speaking and listening at its core. Both of those human functions become harder with a mask on.

However, at this stage in the evolution of the virus, there’s a bigger consideration. The issue is whether the use of face masks reduces the risk of transmission of the virus and thereby helps to keep children in the classroom and staff in the workplace.

In other words, the argument is about whether the benefits of face coverings outweigh the disadvantages.

And we might think that this should be a reasonably easy question to answer, given that we’ve had 21 months of talking about masks. But that is apparently not the case.

An evidence summary by the Department for Education reported on various studies, including preliminary findings on a sample of secondary schools that “demonstrate a potential positive effect in reducing pupil absence due to Covid-19.”

However, the overall verdict was that the evidence was “not conclusive”.

Meanwhile, a clinical epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London appeared to be in a lot less doubt, telling BBC Radio 4’s World at One that the evidence on masks being effective and reducing Covid in schools is “overwhelming”, citing analysis in the USA that sounded pretty convincing.

The DfE summary does mention the studies in the USA, reporting that they generally found higher rates of Covid-19 in schools without mask requirements compared with those with mask requirements.

However, it also reports that these USA studies were excluded from the latest UK Health Security Agency review “due to the type of study design” or “published after the cut-off date”.

How effective are face masks in classrooms?

What, we might wearily ask, are we to make of all of this?

Well, it seems to me that there is sufficient good evidence for the benefit of mask-wearing as a means of reducing the risk of transmission and keeping children in classrooms, if that is for a fixed and limited time.

It just cannot be the norm. It must be in place solely to get us through to the return of some kind of normality, hopefully in the next few weeks.

In other words, amid these times of eye-wateringly high rates of virus transmission, the disadvantages are probably a price worth paying.

And that, from what school and colleges leaders say - the people actually working in our schools and colleges rather than heckling from the sidelines - is what young people appear to be saying, too, exuding characteristic resilience and purposefulness.

Nevertheless, simpler and clearer messaging on the part of the government would surely be helpful.

Ventilation to fight the virus

Which brings us to the equally vexed question of ventilation and those air cleaning units.

Why it has taken this long to get to this fairly modest position is anybody’s guess, but it is also worth making the point that the air cleaning units don’t actually fully address the issue of ventilation in any case.

The Health and Safety Executive says that their purpose is to reduce airborne transmission of aerosols where it is not possible to maintain adequate ventilation. “These units are not a substitute for ventilation. You should prioritise any areas identified as poorly ventilated for improvement in other ways before you think about using an air cleaning device,” it says.

So, really these units are intended to help in crowded, stuffy classrooms where opening windows doesn’t provide much relief, and where there is no other solution available.

I am not sure on what basis the government thinks this applies to only 7,000 classrooms given that much of the school estate is pretty old and requires £11.4 billion of remedial work.

However, the wider point is that this still leaves many schools and colleges with the only option on ventilation being to open external windows and doors in the middle of winter, and to put in an air cleaning unit if that still doesn’t do the job.

It all feels a bit lacklustre, given that the government has had nearly two years to think about this. The answer is surely to undertake a more strategic approach to improving ventilation through investment in mechanical ventilation systems and rebuilding work where required.

But that, of course, is expensive and so we are left with a familiar make-do-and-mend approach.

I suppose ministers may well be hoping that all this becomes a thing of the past pretty soon, that the virus will somehow downsize itself from predatory pandemic into a tamer winter cold, and in the meantime we’ll just argue among ourselves about the pros and cons of control measures and scientific evidence.

And they may be right about that.

But it hardly feels as if schools and colleges have been particularly well supported over the course of the pandemic, either through practical measures or clarity of messaging.

Indeed, too much of it has been an almighty mess.

That isn’t necessarily the fault of the current incumbents in the Department for Education. There really needed to be a proper government strategy much earlier on. There wasn’t one and too often it still feels as if chaos rules the day.

And yet, and yet …

The heroic commitment of school staff

I write this at the end of a week that we were warned would be characterised by an absence of on-site testing kits, by pupils being sent home in their thousands, and by an education system spectacularly imploding.

But it hasn’t felt like that. Of course, we’re seeing huge staffing challenges, to varying degrees in different contexts, with some teachers and other colleagues stranded at home, many pupils self-isolating, and a significant struggle to source sufficient supply staff.

But it’s not been the armageddon that parts of the media appeared to be anticipating with such relish.

And thus we’ve been reminded once again - even amid a national mood of such fractious anxiety - of the optimism of young people, the quietly heroic commitment of staff, the ongoing support of governors and the calm, rational, creative leadership of the people who run our schools and colleges.

Of course, we don’t know what next week might bring.

But as we head into the first full weekend of another unnerving year, we can be proud of the demonstrable public service of the people working in our primary, special and secondary schools; in our pupil referral units, trusts and colleges. They are the daytime guardians of our children and young people. And, yet again, they - that is, you - have stepped up.

Not everyone will have noticed quite what you achieved this week. But lots of us have. And we thank you.