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PARENTS AND STUDENTS have expressed concern about continuing home schooling for at least one more month, particularly for vulnerable children and Leaving Cert students.
Comes as an HSE informational document viewed by TheJournal.ie He warned of the effects being out of school would have on young children’s learning.
The National Council of Women of Ireland has said that the Government should give priority to the reopening of schools. What “Women are at a breaking point as they continue to provide additional child care and homeschooling as the closures continue.”
A mother of elementary school children told TheJournal.ie that “people are falling apart” and that relations between teachers and parents have become very tense.
“It absolutely is. [getting more difficult], relations between parents and schools have suffered, you have to fight for Live Zoom calls, I don’t know how I can show my face at school again. They have all fought each other. “
“The people who don’t normally get involved in campaigns have changed,” he said.
The mother said teachers appear to be “much more willing” to go back to school than unions suggest, and are working “much longer hours” than in a physical setting “in real life.”
“The Government, NPHET, all unions must make this work,” he said, adding that it had to be a response from the entire government to get the children to go back to school.
‘Unheard of children’s voices’
An HSE briefing note dated January 5 this year, and signed by three pediatric health experts, noted how reopening the schools had been “widely debated.”
When asked, the HSE was unable to clarify the context of the briefing note.
“The children’s voices, however, are once again left unheard,” he said. “It is important that decisions about the future education of children are based on the factors and facts that are important to them.”
The document notes that the closure of schools “reduces opportunities for the acquisition of new knowledge, the development and maintenance of peer relationships and also results in the loss of newly acquired skills.”
At a Tusla briefing held for parents of elementary school children this week, TheJournal.ie They told her it was said that children ages 8 to 12 are more likely to suffer during social isolation, and that this amplifies over time. A confirmation request for this was sent to Tusla, but no response was received at the time of publication.
The briefing note also states that the three months of education lost last year, along with any day this year, will result in losses that will not be “easily made up” with Junior and Leaving Cert students; children attending DEIS schools; children from families of low socioeconomic groups; and those with special educational needs most affected.
In the most striking part of the document, it says:
The OECD predicts that the current cohort of children in grades 1-12 can expect 3% less income in their lifetime. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds will be most affected. Longer school closings will further reduce future potential and revenue.
This data is very robust. It is based on extensive research showing that each additional year of education increases a person’s lifetime income by 7.5% to 10%. The strong correlation between years of schooling and income is probably one of the strongest findings of all empirical economic research.
The area of learning most affected by school closures is mathematics, the document says, adding that reading is negatively affected by children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
High school students
Alison O’Sullivan, an ISSU education officer, said “it’s getting tougher” in recent weeks for high school students.
“It is important to say that the upper cycle curriculum was not designed to be taught online, it is meant to be taught in a classroom. It will never replace face-to-face learning. If we expect students to take an exam, they must have face-to-face learning. ”
“I live in rural areas of Ireland and the wifi connection is a big problem. Resources are another big issue, where there could be only one laptop per family.
“This may come as a surprise to many people, but many students do not have a digital device or are doing their school work from their phone. Some may be taking care of a younger sibling. “
David O’Gorman, a parent of high school students and a spokesperson for the ETB National Parents Association parent group, which represents about a third of high schools, said students were “losing steam.”
“When it started, there was a bit of excitement. In the last two weeks the motivation is just gone. “
He said many parents are reporting that their children’s sleep patterns are a “big” problem, with some teens staying up until 2, 3 or 4 am.
He said the biggest problem was the inconsistency of schooling: “This is not online education, these are emergency classes.”
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O’Gorman said that some classes are only 10-15 minutes long, while others are 35-40 minutes long. Some schools want students to have cameras on, which some parents don’t like. Other schools are only focusing on teaching core subjects, he said.
Timeline of schools reopening
At the beginning of the year, the government announced that schools would remain closed until at least February, as Ireland’s health system grappled with an increase in Covid-19 cases.
Although the Government and NPHET emphasized that schools were environments where Covid-19 was highly unlikely to spread, they made the decision to stop the movement of around 1 million people to and from school buildings.
The reopening of schools would begin with children with special educational needs, the government said.
Although talks continued with unions and other stakeholders to do this, the school closings were extended as SNAs and teachers remained concerned about the safety of returning to schools during a large number of Covid-19 cases and the new variants.
An informational meeting held on January 18 with 16,000 SNA teachers, led by Assistant Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ronan Glynn, failed to assure teachers that schools were a safe environment to return to, especially with the lack of data on the effect of the new Covid variants.
This Thursday, February 11, 124 special schools reopened at 50% of their capacity. On Monday, February 22, classes for children with special educational needs will resume in ordinary schools.
At an NPHET informational meeting this week, Dr. Glynn cautioned against reopening schools yet.
“We still have more people in the hospital than at any time last year, even more people in critical care … We continue to see a level of disease transmission in the community that is too high for a million people to return.”
A bell ‘Reopen schools in real life’ has started online this week, asking people to sign a petition to support the reopening of schools as soon as possible.
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