Well that's exactly it. There's also an argument that if you're sending parents back to work, then the schools have to be open but... as soon as you cut one, it's utterly bonkers not to cut the other.
As you say, there was a term of teaching remotely and while not great, by definition such things get better, the more practice there is at such things and, for that matter, with more notice about the need to do it that way. Had the summer been on notice that teaching would be remote, teachers would have had time to plan.
It's not just national government that would have had to supply devices either. Many councils have schemes where their old laptops get supplied to charities -
Coventry does! So tap into them, tap into companies such as IBM for their old stock (think of the great publicity they'd get etc.) and try and limit how much government has to spend, by actually planning to spread the load with some kind of plan, where what government ends up doing is underwriting any shortfall, rather than committing to it all from the off.
But of course we go it alone with grand plans, then row back when we realise the cost, and don't think about the damage of shuffling from one issue to another, without trying to look at the wider picture. This could actually have been an opportunity to level up society, offer opportunity to children who wouldn't have it in traditional ways of doing things.
And *if* rumours about a vaccine actually being on the horizon, then a temporary stay on children going in seems so much more sensible, if it's a relatively short spell of their lives, and not indeterminate.