Technology has helped but no substitute for classroom interaction

TECHNOLOGY has been a great help over recent months. It has enabled teachers to teach, pupils to learn and parents to work from home. It has facilitated communication: the sharing of pictures, voice messages, videos etc and has been invaluable.

However, there is no substitute for human connection and interaction.

When the children who attended primary school go to sit down at their desk in secondary school this August they will need time to adjust.

They have been able to meet up with friends while adhering to social distancing and know what they can and cannot do.

They will be transitioning into adulthood and all that comes with that in the early years in secondary school, learning how to be responsible men and women, but for the rest of this year they need love, care and attention as they wave goodbye to their primary school life: its teachers, its spaces, its traditions and its routines.

Forever more they will remember walking the corridors of their school, the smells, sounds and highlights of growing up alongside classmates, some of whom may be going on to other schools this autumn.

Leaving primary and going into secondary is a watershed moment; an emotional moment and one which needs to be acknowledged and appreciated for the big milestone that it is.

Primary schools across Co Wexford have been marking this by holding graduation ceremonies, using technology to hold up pupils and celebrate their contributions to school life.

For it is not only teachers, but also pupils, principals, caretakers and secretaries that comprise the heart of a school.

After eight years they, combined, made your local school the bedrock of learning, growth and light that it is and will continue to be for children next year and in the years and decades to come.

You never stop learning and pupils will go on to the next phase of their education secure in the knowledge that the more effort they put in, the more they will get out of secondary school, but also friendships forged in the classrooms whose desk seats they occupied for eight incredible years.