Across France, primary school pupils sat at least a metre apart in small classes and listened to teachers in masks on their first day back after two months of home-schooling during the coronavirus lockdown, Reuters reports.

The lessons, though, did not cover maths or grammar, but hygiene amid a public health emergency: wash your hands, don’t touch your face and keep away from each other.

That was the new reality as some 1.5 million elementary and primary pupils — roughly one in every four — returned to class as France tentatively emerges from lockdown.