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The president of the Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN) has expressed concern that a number of schools are facing a 50 per cent shortage in teachers as schools reopen on Thursday, amid a high level of Covid-19 cases driven by the Omicron variant.
Brian O’Doherty’s comments came after Minister for Education Norma Foley said she will not be pursuing derogation measures for teachers who are close contacts of positive Covid-19 cases so they can return to work sooner.
The IPPN conducted a survey of members, to which 1,500 schools responded (about half of all primary schools, according to Mr O’Doherty), and found that half of those schools were facing staff shortages of 20 per cent. Eight percent of schools were facing more than a 50 per cent shortage due to Covid.
Mr O’Doherty told RTÉ radio’s Today show that 40 per cent of schools that had responded to the survey had reported they would have insufficient staff to reopen all classes.
Earlier Ms Foley told both RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland and Newstalk Breakfast that mitigation measures in schools had been made by medical experts and the view of the public-health experts was that the current measures “are sufficient”.
Public-health officials gave the education sector the green light to reopen on Thursday after they met with Ms Foley and education partners on Tuesday.
Mr O’Doherty said that while he was concerned about the reopening, he was happy to be guided by the public-health advice because of the impact of school closures on children and their families.
However, he warned that control measures were not fool-proof and there would be significant numbers of cases in schools.
He said it was crucial that schools had timely public-health advice and access to risk-assessment measures in the event of an outbreak.
The shortage of substitute teachers could also be a problem and schools would have to be prepared to redeploy special-needs assistants and special-needs teachers. Boards of management would also have to make decisions such as the necessity for some classes to be conducted remotely, he said.
Contact tracing
The general secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) called on the Government to “look again” at reintroducing contact tracing in primary schools.
“I am beseeching the Government,” John Boyle said on Wednesday. “[Contact tracing] worked well while we had it . . . That’s what we need if we want gold-standard teaching.”
Ms Foley said the situation in schools would remain under review and public health had agreed to look at the issue of medical-grade masks for teachers and contact tracing. “If public health come back and say that they should be involved in contact tracing in schools then we will do that.”
The Minister said on Wednesday that she wanted to see “a hierarchy of priority” of children to remain in school including pupils with special needs, younger children for whom remote learning would be difficult and exam students.
The coming days and weeks “will not be without their challenges”, she said, but the pandemic has shown that children are best served by in-person learning.
The Department of Education adopted a “child-centred approach”, she said, and would work “hand in hand” with schools, providing a helpline seven days a week, with extra support from the Inspectorate “to best determine how to go forward for the school year”.
Ms Foley denied that school principals were being asked to carry out contact tracing. They had to text or call the parents of any children in a pod if one was identified as being positive and after that it was up to the parents, she said. “I trust parents.”
Operating in a pandemic, it was a remarkable achievement that schools would reopen, and this was possible because of the goodwill and generosity of school communities, she added.
INTO ‘more upbeat’
Mr Boyle said he is “more upbeat” about the return to school following the meeting with Ms Foley and public health on Tuesday.
Prior to Christmas, at a “very terse” meeting on December 22nd, “public health actually apologised for their failures and from then on there has been work done over Christmas to be fair”, he said.
“Public health are coming back to help primary, to support principals and teachers who were really beleaguered before Christmas. There will be people in each HSE area basically designated to help primary principals.
“The Inspectorate are coming back on board to a greater degree and even though parents will be absolutely thrilled that schools are reopening tomorrow there is a big caution around all of this. We’re probably going to have 7,000 to 8,000 members missing.”
During the first school term, when there was no contact tracing in primary schools, there had been no data on outbreaks and infections coming in, he added. At the meeting with public health on Tuesday, “a huge amount of data” had been presented that showed children “are not driving this pandemic”.
There was a lot more to be done, he added. The message from schools was that this was going to be a very difficult term and there would be situations where classes would have to be from home.
Annual leave
Meanwhile, the chief executive of the child protection agency, Tusla, has warned that the cancelling of annual leave for some staff will have to be considered in the coming weeks as the number of cases of Covid continues to rise.
Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Today show, Bernard Gloster said that on Tuesday there were 436 Tusla staff on Covid-related leave, 180 of whom were confirmed positive cases. That was “almost 10 per cent” of the agency’s workforce.
The problem was acute in 24-hour facilities some of which were experiencing 30-40 per cent shortages, he added.
Tusla already operated under the Health Service Executive’s derogation rule, he said, which had been applied “in 20 situations so far”.
Throughout the pandemic Tusla had three priorities, Mr Gloster said: frontline child protection (they deal with 200 referrals per day); support for the 6,000 children in care; and support for children in domestic violence situations.
The closure of schools last year had meant that many of the usual supports for vulnerable children, their “safety nets”, had been taken away. The decrease in referrals from schools had led to an increase in referrals from the gardaí and domestic violence protection providers, he said.
The focus of concern had changed, Mr Gloster said, and he echoed the concerns expressed by the Rapporteur on Children, the Children’s Ombudsman and the Children’s Rights Alliance on the impact of school closures on children.