The question of when to reopen schools is one of the most crucial safety decisions this country has ever faced.

It goes beyond the welfare of the teachers and other staff working in schools - vital though that obviously is.

Get the timing of opening schools wrong so the virus spreads and it could be catastrophic for the whole country - in both health and economic terms. Would a second sudden lockdown hold, and could business recover from its aftermath? Could the NHS cope with an unexpectedly high sudden second spike?

Revealed: The answers heads need at crunch DfE talks

Unions: 1 June school openings ‘extremely unlikely’

Coronavirus: DfE to hold back-to-school talks

DfE adviser: School return plan could risk virus spread

Of course, there is also pressure in the other direction - the longer schools remain largely closed the more damage it will do to both pupils’ education and to the economy.

But the stakes are so high on this one that surely it must be decided according to the evidence on what it really means for safety - with nothing else, no other motives, allowed to cloud policymakers’ judgement.

Coronavirus: The political battle over reopening schools

Surely this is one decision that should not be swallowed up by a traditional adversarial British political battle, with all the pride, hubris and polarisation that that involves.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what has been happening, and it is getting worse, with both sides digging in.

Yes, I know that most things are political. But this has become a political row in its most narrow and unhelpful sense.

This is a time when it is vital that people share expertise and evidence, not compete to distort it for their own predetermined goals. Instead, we’ve been served up great big dollops of the most partisan and - in terms of making informed decisions - most dysfunctional aspects of our political culture.

All the classic elements are there - the Daily Mail’s campaigning front-page splash, accompanied by a hatchet job on the government’s main “hard left” opponent. The Daily Mirror is lined up on one side with the Murdoch papers on the other. Even Tony Blair is sticking his oar in. 

Every possible angle is being weaponised. The unremarkable news that some academy chains are preparing for reopening in June, subject to safety assessments (name me a school that isn’t), has been sold as a victory against “militants”.  

And now the stakes are being raised higher still. A final decision on the 1 June openings, originally expected to be on 28 May, is now apparently being brought forward to this week, according to - you guessed it - anonymous government sources.

Meanwhile, people are picking sides, as though they are supporting a football team, and the rhetoric is moving further and further away from the reality of what schools will at some point have to deal with.

‘Sparse’ data on whether pupils can transmit virus 

Asked on Sunday if he could guarantee that teachers will be safe in reopened schools, given doctors’ warnings `that it is too soon, Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove offered an unequivocal “yes”.

But the government’s own scientists are much more circumspect. Last night one acknowledged that the data on whether pupils could transmit the virus was “sparse”.

Official scientific evidence summarised by the Department for Education reveals a “low degree of confidence” that children transmit the virus less than adults. And the department’s own chief scientific adviser has said that the government’s school return plan could risk the virus spreading.

Mr Gove went on to declare that to keep schools safe, children “will have to be distanced now, sitting at desks in a way which might seem rather more traditional”. Such comments may play well in the media. But are they really helping to create a workable plan when the government’s own guidance has already acknowledged that social distancing in primaries is not possible?

Divorced from reality

The unions’ position can seem just as divorced from reality. Guidance issued at the weekend insists that schools should maintain “social distancing of 2 metres between pupils and between pupils and school staff”. It also seems to pre-empt the result of any further discussions by saying that 1 June openings are “extremely unlikely”. 

As others have noted today, the situation is descending into “mad, trench warfare”, more about a test of virility than finding a safe, sensible solution.

Such political bust-ups can be mutually beneficial for the combatants, allowing them to look good to their core constituencies. Unions are praised by their activists, who see them as standing up to an overbearing right-wing government that has got its priorities wrong.

Meanwhile, ministers are playing well to a base who like to see them facing down the trade unions who are standing in the way of the rest of the country with their militant obstructionism.

But some things matter more. At some point, schools will have to reopen, when the virus is still a risk, and everyone involved will have to work together to find a safe way of doing it.

Both sides will have to climb down from their entrenched comfort zones. If they don’t then we will all be the losers.