Government wary of rushing reopening schools as reports kids would make phased return to classrooms from – The Irish Sun

THE Government is wary of rushing the reopening of schools after last night denying reports that kids would make a phased return to classrooms from March 1.

The National Public Health Emergency Team led by CMO Dr Tony Holohan will brief the Government on Thursday about the Covid-19 health risks surrounding reopening schools.

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The Irish Sun understands that the Government is extremely concerned about the new coronavirus variants when it comes to schools with any reopening plan set to be slow and steady.

The Leaving Cert classes will be the first to return to school followed by the early year of primary school such as junior and senior infants.

But no date has been agreed.

Education Minister Norma Foley briefed the Cabinet on the confidential talks with stakeholders to try and reopen schools but no date has yet been set to start the reopening.

Reports yesterday suggested that Minister Foley told the Cabinet that the plan would commence on March 1st however, this was later dismissed by a Government official who said no final date was given to Cabinet.

A full plan to reopen schools on a phased basis is expected to be published later this week.

Leaving Cert students are set to get clarity today on whether they will sit exams this summer with a plan for the phased reopening of schools due by the end of the week.

It comes as the Government were last night preparing to publish draft legislation to enable mandatory quarantine for people coming into Ireland with travellers set to foot a 2,000 bill for their two week stay in a designated Covid hotel.

Officials from the Department of Education remained locked in talks with trade unions representing teachers last night about whether to push ahead with the traditional leaving cert or switch to a predicted grades system.

The Government wants to give students the choice to sit an exam or take a predicted grade but unions are concerned about how to assess predicted grades as students have missed large parts of the past year and have not sat Christmas or summer exams.

The Cabinet Sub Committee on Education, which includes Education Minister Norma Foley, Higher Education Minister Simon Harris and Childrens Minister Roderic OGorman will hold a crunch meeting today to make a final decision regarding this years leaving cert.

The Government are also expected to make an announcement on the phased reopening of schools by the end of the week.

Opposition parties yesterday slammed the Government for continuing to leave students in limbo and delay decisions on the leaving cert and reopening schools.

Labours Aodhan ORiordain said he was disappointed that there has been no mention of the Junior Cert or Leaving Cert Applied during the exams discussions.

He said he does not expect the practical and oral exams to take place this year and claimed if schools reopen next month they should not close again.

He said: If we are opening on the 1st of March then we want it done in a safe manner but we can not divorce the school reopening discussion from the wider discussion about suppression of the virus.

The decision on schools reopening doesnt happen separately from the wider debate but we have to open schools and then ensure that they can remain open.

Thats the key because it will be very disappointing if we open schools for a short period of time and then have to close them again for a prolonged period of time.

Everybody wants to get back to school. Its profoundly damaging for young people not to be in school. Labour has proposed a fund of 100 million that will go towards addressing some of the damage thats been caused by people being out of school.

Social Democrats education spokesman Gary Gannon said the Government could fall into the mistakes of the past by setting a reopening date for schools instead of using Covid metrics.

He said: In the past weve been let down by dates, we give a date and then we dont meet the date.

What I would like to see from the Department of Education and the Minister is a metric of at what level of numbers can our schools reopen.

That would give much more certainty. On March 1 we dont know where we will be with the numbers but we know that at a certain point we will be able to reopen our schools.

I fully except the Ministers intentions are honourable in this but I think were repeating the mistakes of the past so Im no longer interested in dates, Im interested in metrics.

The Social Democrats are calling for a taskforce to be set up to address the mental health issues facing young people following the school closures during the pandemic.

It comes as the Cabinet last night held a virtual meeting to sign off on new draft legislation for hotel quarantining with travellers set to foot a 2,000 bill for their two week stay.

Ministers held a full Cabinet meeting yesterday afternoon where the department of healths quarantining legislation was discussed but some fine tuning had to be done before it could be officially signed off at a second cabinet meeting last night.

The legislation will now go before the Dail and Seanad before being signed into law by President Micheal D Higgins in a process that is expected to take between two to three weeks.

All people arriving from 20 listed countries where new variants are spreading will be forced to undergo two weeks of quarantine at a hotel which will be run by a private security company.

The travellers will be locked in an en suite room for the two weeks and will have all their meals and laundry looked after by the hotel.

The travellers will also undergo regular Covid-19 testing during their quarantine and will be forced to pay for their stay which is expected to cost around 2,000.

The HSE are still working to secure a number of hotels to use for quarantine facilities however it is expected that this will be finished by the time the new legislation passes.

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett yesterday said the Governments mandatory quarantine system will not stop the virus being reimported into Ireland unless it applies to all travellers from every country.

He said: Its full of holes because its going to be a sort of cherry picking of countries from which people will have to quarantine rather than just quarantining anybody who is coming into the country.

Unless the quarantine is across the board that anybody coming into this country is quarantined, it will not have the desired effect.

I think thats symptomatic of the governments failure to really deal with the Covid crisis and its unwillingness to take the sort of measures necessary to actually end this really grim situation that were facing.

I think its worth emphasising really how grim it is. Really the situation, the lockdown, the cases, the fatalities are really taking their toll on peoples mental health and that would not be necessary if the government were willing to embark on a serious strategy to crush Covid-19.

That would require mandatory quarantine for all incoming travellers but also critically it would involve actually stopping non essential work.

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Government wary of rushing reopening schools as reports kids would make phased return to classrooms from - The Irish Sun