Primary school head explains why he's ordered all pupils to wear surgical masks or face shields in his Milton Keynes school

Warren Harrison, CEO of Premier Academy's Eaton Mill primary school in Bletchley, wrote to parents this week to insist all pupils from the age of five upwards wear surgical-type masks or shields all day when the school opens next month. See the Citizen story here .

His ruling goes against the advice of the government, which states children under the age of 11 are exempt from having to wear face coverings.

The story caused a flood of comments of social media, with many people disagreeing with Mr Harrison's initiative.

This morning he told the Citizen there was a "multitude of reasons" behind his decision.

He said: "Our last parental survey returned that only 70 per cent of parents were intending to send their children back to school in September. The school has had five staff resignations citing C-19 as the reason since July.

"We have 456 families with siblings on site and due to the nature of the site and parking restrictions (being at the very end of a cul-de -sac) we found in July that we would struggle to stagger dismissal if we wanted to maintain a one way system."

Mr Harrison said the school was lucky enough to have a number of NHS staff on its governing body and they are "fully supportive" of the initiative.

He said his stance was prompted by growing evidence that Covid-19 is an aerosol spread virus and not simply spread through formites and droplets.

"This point is probably the most salient one to the nation and would explain why when outbreaks happen that so may people get infected.I am now in consultation with NHS about its findings and others who are espousing this view as it will potentially mean replacing all our AC with portable HEPA filters," he said.

"I believe that this may explain why so many companies have already said that there will be no office based return for the foreseeable future and indeed why so many people are working from home."

Mr Harrison said Premier Academy had invested in large-scale precautions such as thermal scanning units and "thousands of pieces of PPE" for the school.