Schools haven’t been given enough notice to reopen next week says Gaelscoil Osrai Principal Seán Ó hArgáin

Gaelscoil Osrai Kilkenny principal Seán Ó hArgáin says schools have not been given enough notice to reopen next week.

Most schools are to remain closed for the rest of January, but leaving cert students will resume classes for three days a week from Monday.

Education for special needs children will also resume that day, under the plans announced by the government yesterday.

Seán Ó hArgáin says two working days notice is not enough.

“Building sites are being locked down because of the fact that they’re considered not to be safe work places, yet teachers are being asked to go into school either at primary level dealing with children with special educational needs or at post primary level to deal with leaving cert students” said Seán.

“I think there is a bit of negotiation and a little bit of working out as to how this can practically happen next week for the schools that will be involved” he added.

Leaving cert student at St Leo’s in Carlow, Sorcha Peters-Lynam has asthma and she says she’s worried about having to go into school three-days a week.

“Initially I was on board with that but a couple of weeks ago when I saw somebody suggested it somewhere, but now I’m not so sure because the case numbers are so high and the most amount of cases I’ve heard of in my school have been in sixth year and even then they’re everywhere at this point” said Sorcha.

“Going in for three days a week is a problem in itself because we have classes that wouldn’t be exam subjects, so why should we have to go in for those classes when we could just be doing online learning and studying for our exams”.