Pubs may have to shut to ensure full-time education can resume, according to a pandemic expert.

Professor Graham Medley, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said ministers might have to consider closing pubs in England in order for lessons to start again next month.

Prime minister Boris Johnson has previously pledged that both primary and secondary schools will return in September “with full attendance”.

MPs: School closures should have been planned for

Research: Attainment gap widened in Covid lockdown, data shows

Survey: DfE lockdown help for poorer pupils ‘has little impact’

However, following chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty’s prediction that the country was “near the limit” for opening up society following the coronavirus lockdown, Prof Medley said a “trade-off” might have to be made to ensure full-time education could resume.

Coronavirus: Will pubs shut to allow schools to reopen?

The warning came as the prime minister announced a slowdown of the lockdown easing, with planned relaxations for the leisure and beauty sectors delayed after a rise in Covid-19 cases was recorded.

When asked whether pubs could have to shut for schools to reopen, Prof Medley, chairman of the Sage sub-group on pandemic modelling, told BBC Radio 4‘s Today programme: “I think that’s quite possible.

“I think we’re in a situation whereby most people think that opening schools is a priority for the health and wellbeing of children and that when we do that we are going to reconnect lots of households.

“And so actually, closing some of the other networks, some of the other activities, may well be required to enable us to open schools.

“It might come down to a question of which do you trade off against each other and then that’s a matter of prioritising. Do we think pubs are more important than schools?”