PLANS to get more primary pupils back to the classroom this term may be dropped later today.

Parents will find out this afternoon whether more of their children will be returning to school before the summer break.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson will deliver a statement to the House of Commons following a cabinet meeting where the next steps to ease lockdown restrictions will be discussed.

Some Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 pupils have already returned to the classroom.

The government has previously said the remaining year groups in the primary sector will return this month.

But many are expecting the plan to be dropped with schools given flexibility over whether or not to admit more pupils.

Teaching unions have been vocal about the issue, claiming it will be impossible to maintain social distancing if more pupils are admitted to schools.

On Monday Health Secretary Matt Hancock said secondary schools may not fully reopen until September "at the earliest."

Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, said reports that the Government is dropping the plan to get all primary school years in England back to school before the end of term is "a huge disappointment".

She told BBC Breakfast: "I think it’s a huge disappointment for those children who’d expected to go back into school before the summer now now may not.

"It does mean that the vast majority, probably about eight million children, very likely won’t return to the classroom until September, which means that, again, there will be a huge variation in their learning over that period."

She said children will remain "isolated", with many living in "fragile" family environments.

"I hope that Government doesn’t just write off this period" she added.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the ‘ambition’ to bring back all primary year groups for a month before the end of the summer term was a case of the Government over-promising something that wasn’t deliverable.

"It isn’t possible to do that while maintaining small class sizes and social bubbles."