Mr. Michael Gillespie:

At second level, every school is trying to make its own plans but there are no national guidelines, as Mr. Boyle noted. There is nothing coming from the Department on this, so schools are making individual plans. The problem again is the digital divide. There are brand new schools with very sophisticated Wi-Fi where every student might even have a tablet, the purchase of which is organised through the school, while there are other schools where there is no such organised arrangement of the standards provided. Many schools also purchased software platforms over the summer, as mentioned earlier. These software platforms are licensed to the school, but teachers and students will have to use their own devices, without training to use these platforms, if there are full or partial closures of schools.

To answer the question, then, there is no overall plan; there are individual schools trying to do their best with the resources they have available. We would welcome, however, some sort of national co-ordination on this issue and we hope that the stakeholders will start getting involved in that process. As I said in my opening remarks, the next challenge is keeping schools open or keeping interaction in place if schools fully or partially close.