ROSTOCK, (Germany): Thousands of children in northern Germany became the first in Europe to begin a new school year on Monday, with the rest of the country watching anxiously as full-time classes began after months of curtailed hours over the coronavirus pandemic.

Masks will be a daily accessory for some of the 150,000 children returning to school in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania region, Germany's first state to reopen the school gates after the summer holidays.

Education ministers of Germany's 16 states had agreed that schools will reopen full-time after the summer break, after offering only partial hours in the weeks when the lockdown was eased.

With infection numbers once again creeping up, fears are rising that the new school start could yet prove temporary.

But officials warn that children cannot afford to miss more school. "The children need to be present in school because we have to prevent more lost time," Steffen Kaestner, headteacher of the CJD Jugenddorf-Christophorus school in Rostock, told AFP.