Schools will be expected to be able to conduct one Covid test every five and a half minutes, the government indicated today.

Secondary students should be tested three times on site on their return to school, the Department for Education (DfE) has said.

Officials told journalists during a briefing today that it had modelled testing in schools to ensure it was possible for secondaries to follow the guidelines from 8 March.

The department said that schools can set up a number of desks at which they can carry out tests.

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It found that around 11 tests can be conducted per testing desk, per hour.

So, if there were 10 desks in a hall, that would mean 660 tests could be carried out per day, the department said.

Giving feedback, some schools said they could carry out more tests than that, the DfE added. Others said the process got faster with practice.

Tes calculated that, at a rate of 11 tests per desk, per hour, schools would be expected to be able to conduct at least one Covid test every five and a half minutes, even if only one desk is allocated to the task.

Asked about the modelling, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The logistics of processing large numbers of students through testing bays are enough to make one’s head spin, and this will be very challenging indeed for schools and colleges.

“We have explained to the government that this may well require a minimum of two weeks of staggered starts in order to allow all students to be tested prior to returning to the classroom, and we are disappointed to see that the DfE’s press release this afternoon appears to suggest that ‘discretion’ over these arrangements will extend to only a single week.

“The government needs to understand that there are a range of circumstances facing schools, such as how many pupils they teach, how many people they have been able to recruit to run testing stations and how much space they can allocate to setting up those testing stations.

“We expect the government to show a spirit of understanding, particularly as it has handed schools and colleges the job of carrying out a medical task with very little support.”