LAST week, we saw the news in Prestonpans that a pupil at Preston Tower had sadly caught coronavirus.

This, of course, is a worrying time for families but the school and the council are working closely with NHS Lothian to monitor the situation and are following all national guidance and health advice. Thanks to that work, including keeping in place the enhanced cleaning procedures, the school has been able to remain open.

Our thanks should go to the health professionals, council staff and schools staff who have done a great deal of work, not just in the past couple of weeks since the schools have re-opened but all through the summer in preparing to open. It was a mammoth task they faced, not helped by moving goalposts on a national level, but they have done it.

As we reopened our schools, there were always going to be flare-ups and issues, and the aim needs to be to deal with those as best we can. Now that schools are open, we should always be looking for ways to improve that process as well and make our schools safer.

One of the suggestions in the past week that I believe is worth serious consideration is from Jamie Greene, the Scottish Conservatives’ education spokesman, who has called for schools in Scotland to be provided with Covid home testing kits. This is already an approach taken in England, where the Department of Health issued guidance last Wednesday that all schools should be given an initial supply of 10 home test kits. These home testing kits are to be made available for children and young people who are unable to access testing elsewhere.

This is particularly important since those from more deprived backgrounds do face barriers to accessing testing, for example less likely to have access to a car thus unable to make use of the drive-through testing facilities like the one in Cockenzie. Not only are they more likely to face those barriers to testing but recent figures have shown that people from the most deprived postcodes in Scotland were more than twice as likely to die from Covid-19 than those from the wealthiest areas.

It is very important we do as much as possible to protect teachers, staff and pupils. Figures have shown, though, that nearly two-thirds of staff do not feel safe at their work and I know from speaking to parents that many pupils feel the same. Nobody should feel unsafe in school or in their place of work. We must do all we can to make them feel safer.