‘SCHOOLS CLOSURE’ SPARKED BY ONLINE PETITION
Teachers’ union made call after 4,000 signatures
A CALL by a teachers’ union for extra days off at Christmas was driven by a petition of fewer than 4,000 signatures.
The demand lit up the airwaves yesterday and was criticised by parents as well as children’s rights campaigners and even other teachers.
The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) said it made the call so that schoolchildren would have more time to self-isolate before they meet their grandparents for the festive season. But family doctors and health experts dismissed their reasoning, pointing out it can take up to two weeks for symptoms to develop.
The proposal was hatched after an online petition called for schools to close on the Friday
before Christmas, December 18. However, this year Christmas Day also falls on a Friday, so the teachers and their pupils are expected in class up to Tuesday, December 22.
The TUI wants ‘serious consideration’ to be given to the early closing call, and claims it would ‘boost morale’.
General Secretary Michael Gillespie said the suggestion was put to the Government following a petition, which was widely shared on social media in recent weeks, calling for schools to close on December 18.
However, to date, that petition has garnered only 3,960 signatures – a tiny number backing the secondary schools teachers’ union, when the fact that there are about 370,000 pupils in post-primary schools is taken into account.
The creator of the MyUplift page said the call would enable staff and pupils to self-isolate for a week ahead of family Christmas celebrations with elderly loved ones. And Mr Gillespie said: ‘Our branches took notice of the petition and it was then decided, at our sub- committee l ast week, to put the suggestion to the Government.’ Teachers are exhausted, he argued, and so are students.
‘They’re in school every day wearing masks, which heightens the fatigue and the intensity.’ And more controversially, he added: ‘But the second and most important reason I think people are looking for, is they’re telling us that Christmas is a family time, they want to meet their grandparents. The idea being that if they finish on the Friday, they gain not just the Monday and the Tuesday but the Saturday and Sunday in terms of self-isolating,’ he told Newstalk Breakfast.
However, Monaghan GP Dr Illona Duffy, and i nfectious diseases expert Professor Anthony Staines, were quick to point out yesterday
‘We’ve missed so much time already’
that it can take up to a fortnight to develop symptoms.
It also comes as the latest data show there has been a marked fall in the number of Covid-19 outbreaks recorded in schools.
There were ten clusters identified in schools last week, compared to 21 the week before, and 30 and 46 in the two weeks before that.
The National Parents’ Council Post-Primary has come out against the idea, saying it is important to retain as much normality as possible for students. And mother of seven and columnist Jen Hogan is not in favour of the idea.
She said: ‘Obviously, I’m not a medic but one thing that hugely concerns me is this suggestion that there would be a benefit in having seven days between closures and meeting up with elderly or vulnerable relatives – the public health advice is 14 days. You can’t do a bit of a quarantine.
‘Another concern I’d have is how working parents are supposed to manage. Nobody considers schools as childcare, but it would be naive to pretend that parents don’t factor in the hours and days their children are due to be in school, into their work commitments.’
One teacher, who i s a TUI member, Karen, told Liveline that she is ‘disgusted’ by the suggestion. ‘I want to be in school teaching. We’ve missed so much time already, it’s difficult to make up the time, and the kids are happier in school. We’ve got to make up for lost time,’ she told listeners. ‘I’m not burnt out at all whatsoever. It’s difficult wearing a mask every day and trying to talk through it… but we all have to make sacrifices. ‘It’s our job – we’re paid to do it.’ Karen, who works in a De is school, added that many pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged areas, need to physically be in school to get work done.
‘I’ve seen the devastation of the kids when they weren’t in school and how much they’ve gone behind. They really have gone behind in their work,’ she said.
A mother, Máire, from Kilkenny, whose child is in sixth year, said teachers should be more focused on helping students who have already missed so much school due to the pandemic.
She told Live line listeners: ‘Teachers are just going to have to take it on the chin. The TUI had three months off in the summer to recuperate from their changing work practices.’
Children’s Rights campaigner Tanya Ward said that she could not agree with any measure that would result in students missing out on education. She told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘If schools want to finish early that’s OK, but they should also return a week earlier to compensate for the time lost.’
Monaghan-based GP Illona Duffy told RTÉ’s Claire Byrne Show, there was no medical evidence to support the idea that a week off school would make it safer to meet older or vulnerable relatives.
She said it can take up to a fortnight to develop symptoms.
And Professor of Public Health Systems in DCU Anthony Staines said the incubation of the virus is actually somewhere between five to ten days and some people can experience long incubation periods with it.