Nicola Sturgeon has defended the Scottish Government's plan to reopen secondary schools on a limited basis but admitted the strategy was not perfect.
All pupils from S1-S6 will be offered some in-school teaching from the week beginning March 15 but the priority will be senior students who are studying for qualifications.
That means some children in S1-S3 could be offered as little as two hours of teaching time per week, depending on which local authority they stay in.
Full-time education in high schools will not resume until after the Easter holidays at the earliest.
Jim Thewliss, of teachers' group School Leaders Scotland, today claimed "you would be hard-pressed to find any teacher in Scotland who thinks this is a good idea".
But the First Minister told MSPs that covid data did not support the safe reopening of high schools on a full-time basis from next Monday.
Appearing before Holyrood's Covid-19 committee, the SNP leader said it was important to offer all children at least some school provision before Easter.
"I appreciate there will be different views," she said when questioned by Lib Dems leader Willie Rennie on comments made by Thewliss.
"There will be those who want all young people back in school straightaway, but I don't think that would be the right approach, because it could potentially lead to an increase in transmission that could see things start to run out of control again.
"We want to get young people back into school full-time. We achieved that in August and we think it can be achieved again - our aim is for that to be possible after the Easter holidays."
She continued: "The judgement we had to make was whether there would be no in-school provision for the lower secondary school until after Easter, or try and get some limited (teaching) between now and Easter.
"We opted for the latter because, we can all see not just the educational impact of being out of school, but the wellbeing impact as well.
"We always said it would be limited, and there would be local flexibility in how it would be delivered. I appreciate the pressure that puts on teachers and local authorities."
She added: "There are very legitimate views on the right or wrong thing to do. There is nothing perfect here, and there is nothing ideal when living through a global pandemic. We are trying to balance these considerations in the best way possible."
Asked by Rennie if it was worth pursuing such a "complicated" reopening plan, Sturgeon said: "I suspect if we had to tried to create some alternative provision, we would probably be having a similar discussion about a different set of circumstances.
"Had we not tried to not get some provision between now and Easter- and the data supported this - the alternative would not have been to say to secondary pupils that everybody could return full-time from March 15.
"It was a choice between limited provision or no provision at all."
Thewliss told BBC Scotland: "You will be hard-pushed to find anyone within my professional association, even any teacher in Scotland, who thinks this is a good idea."
He added: "We understand and appreciate the support required for young people in their health and wellbeing. But this is not the way to do it.
"This is counterproductive in relation to the systems we have set up for remote learning and engaging people in their remote learning. This destroys a great deal of that and distracts school leadership teams from doing that to put a cobbled-together process in place for two weeks."
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