Less than a third of parents of public school pupils have given consent for their children to be involved in a system-wide Covid-19 screening programme, the education minister revealed yesterday.

Diallo Rabain said his ministry had extended the last Saturday deadline to 8pm last night for consent to be given and appealed for more parents to sign up.

Mr Rabain highlighted that “90 plus per cent” of parents of private school pupils had agreed to allow their children to take part in the voluntary programme, compared to 31 per cent in the public system.

He added that he hoped more public school parents would respond – but insisted that the programme would go ahead in any case.

Mr Rabain said: “There is no magic number that makes this work.

“This is another layer of protection we are adding.”

He added he did not know why the uptake in Government-run schools was so low.

The plan was to have 25 per cent of pupils at every school self-administer a coronavirus saliva test every week so that each child would have one test a month.

Families of pupils who test positive will be contacted with advice by their doctors or the health ministry.

The Ministry of Education said that all tests in private and public and private schools would be done on-site.