Scotland’s primary school leaders’ organisation is calling for the school return date of 11 August to be delayed.

Greg Dempster, the general secretary of AHDS (Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland), said that primary headteachers - who have often been working 12 hour days to deliver the school reopening plan before government messaging changed this week - need time to prepare.

Until this week, Scottish schools had been planning for two-metre social distancing when pupils returned after the summer break, and had been organising on that basis. They had converted gym halls into classrooms, planned for smaller class sizes and employed more teachers, Mr Dempster said.

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All that changed, though, when the education secretary John Swinney announced on Tuesday - the day before many Scottish teachers started their summer break - that preparations for the reopening of schools should now focus on bringing pupils back full time.

That Scotland’s efforts to suppress the coronavirus were proving successful was “undoubtedly positive”, said Mr Dempster in an interview with Tes Scotland.

However, he argued, the return of schools - set for 11 August, although in some places pupils would return later that week - must now be delayed because schools would need time to plan, especially as the final decision from the government on whether full-time or part-time education was to be delivered could come as late as 30 July.

He also called for clarity as soon as possible about which aspects of the reopening plan published in May remained in place.

That plan talked about taking education outdoors as much as possible into temporary shelters and even “geodomes”; creating more handwashing facilities; considering how to prevent crowds of parents gathering at drop-off and pick-up times; and recommended pupils ate in their classrooms.

Mr Dempster said: “Primary heads have worked a lot of hours to get a viable plan up and running on the basis of the return-to-schools guidance [published in May]. People have talked to me about working 12-hour days over the last three weeks to get everything in order and a staffing plan to take blended learning forward.

“Now they might be coming back on an entirely different basis and there is huge uncertainty about what 11 August will look like and a lot of work to be done now to identify that.

“That all suggests to me that there needs to be a period after the scheduled return date of pupils to allow planning for a return on a full-time basis.”

Many Scottish teachers are already on holiday, with all schools off for summer a week on Friday.

A full-time return to school would require furniture and other items being returned to classrooms, said Mr Dempster, but many schools would hesitate to do even that, given it could yet be that two-metre distancing was in place come August. It all depended on the virus, he pointed out.

He said: “It’s a big deal if you have a whole school to rearrange and you don’t know on what basis - will it be back to normal? Will it be two-metre social distancing? Or will it be somewhere in between?”

How pupils were grouped would also have to be rethought, he pointed out.

“Let’s say you have a 20-classroom school but under the plan for blended learning you’ve managed to maximise space and create 25 classes. That means additional teachers have been found and given contracts and also information about the pupils they are going to have in their class.

“Now they face potentially going back to 20 classes so teachers will change for some pupils and, from the perspective of the teacher, they could end up teaching a completely different stage. That will require planning.”

Primary school leaders must not be expected to work through the holidays to deliver the government’s final decision, he stressed. They needed time to recuperate.

Mr Dempster continued: “School leaders have been working their tails off since the start of all this - working in hubs; supporting staff to deliver an entirely different education; planning and re-planning for the return of pupils.

“Lots of them have already worked through Easter. If they work through the summer, there is no scope for them to take that holiday at a different time and they are run ragged from the shift they have put in these last three months.

“So many members have been in touch with me in response to this [the plan to return full time] saying they are on their knees. They have been neglecting their own families to get things ready for reopening. They need recuperation time for going back for what will be another extremely difficult session.”