Primary students will only attend one school day a week if two metre social distancing remains

Primary school students may only return to school one day a week if the 2-metre social distancing rules are kept in place.

It would also mean students in secondary could only attend school twice a week.

If it was reduced to one-metre primary school students could go to class 50% of the time while some secondary schools could return almost on a full-time basis.

Education Minister, Joe McHugh, says the figures show the need for all children to return to the classroom full-time, which may come at the expense of social distancing:

"If we just bring back 20% or 50% of our students in September, we could potentially do more damage because of the educational regression as of consequence of that."