Patchwork school system is exposed by sick-bay shed

OF ALL the symbols of the cracks in our underfunded school system as exposed by the Covid crisis, perhaps the most shocking is the shed that is serving as an isolation room in Clonbonny national school in Athlone, Co. Westmeath.

Principal Joan Donnelly insists that her school is so short of space that it’s either the draughty shed or nothing at all.

Among the wider school community there may not be unanimity about the shed being better than nothing.

The Clonbonny principal has managed to highlight in a most dramatic way the lack of uniformity in facilities across the school system.

As schools threw open their doors to the media to display their pandemic preparations, it became obvious that while some schools have enough space for a designated sick bay and stores for hand sanitisers and disinfectants, others haven’t room to swing a cat and are still waiting for the tendering process for their new building work to complete.

Then there were the schools like Clonbonny who couldn’t even blag a prefab from the Department of Education because it would require planning permission and a fire certificate. Talk about needless red tape in the midst of a health crisis.

A new survey by Sinn Féin reveals that more than half of school principals do not feel they have sufficient classroom space to facilitate social distancing.

Money, as always, is to blame, or at least the lack of same along with the peculiar development of our school system.

The plethora of different patron bodies and proliferation of small schools in rural areas, waging a constant fight for survival, come at the expense of a more streamlined network of large and well-resourced schools serving broad swathes of the community.

Traditionally, our schools’ ethos was based on the baby Jesus, born in a humble stable.

As a religious ethos slowly disappears from our schools, is the cost-cutting State about to replace it with sick children in sheds?