A decision on whether Scotland's Christmas school holidays will be extended is expected later this week.
Nicola Sturgeon told the Scottish Parliament this afternoon that there are arguments for and against extending the festive break, and the government would think long and hard before reaching any decision.
It emerged last week that discussions had taken place over whether the Christmas holidays should be prolonged to help reduce the risk of Covid-19 outbreaks once pupils and staff return. There were fears that festive rule relaxations could result in a rise in infections in the new year.
In Edinburgh the holidays are currently scheduled to take place between December 23 and 5 January, however reports suggest new proposals could see the dates change to 18 December to 11 January.
The First Minister said today that a decision is likely to be reached in the coming days.
She said: "We are deliberately thinking very hard about all of these issues. They are not straight-forward. There are arguments for standardising the holidays and perhaps extending the holidays slightly. There are also good arguments against that.
"Those decisions have to be carefully considered and they have to be driven by the latest evidence. That is what we will do. I hope we will set out our conclusions on that some time in the course of this week to give parents due notice.
"We will take these decisions carefully given the factors at play. Everything we are doing right now, acting in a way to try to help and contain and suppress the virus, causes difficulties and harms in other ways. That's the nature of the decision making that is underway, not just here but across the UK and much of the world right now.
"We are deliberately taking these decisions carefully and we will communicate them just as soon as we can."
