Well, thanks a whole lot, Gavin W. The announcement that schools would close in England from Friday was pretty well inevitable when Scotland and Wales announced that this was the way they were going, but it doesn’t make the decision less tricky for parents. It’s not apparent that the move was made for reasons of clinical necessity – viz, that children were likely to cross infect each other and their teachers – so much as the reality that teachers were downing tools and simply not turning up.