Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 19 November 2020

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills

Engagement with Trade Unions on Keeping Schools Open: Discussion

Mr. John Boyle:

I echo the Senator's concerns on those who are marginalised. We have been looking for guidance on additional after-school and before-school activities such as breakfast clubs. We want to get guidance that does not tell us to stop them but to make sure they are done safely. The classrooms are highly sanitised with people being kept to pods and bubbles and so on but then they are mixing for those activities and we want to make sure that when they are mixing it is done safely. We have yet to get that guidance.

I have to say that I have been really proud since the Easter holidays of our principals, in particular, but also of all our staff members who provide the free school meals scheme and delivered meals to houses. In the summer, we had the DEIS programmes, which were very important, and we had the special education programmes, particularly for children with autism. For the teachers who volunteered to work on those programmes, that was a fantastic achievement.

I would be worried, as the Senator is, about broadband and I am sure other members are too. We had a situation in which lots of families did not even have the devices to access remote learning in their homes, never mind the broadband. Some 23,779 people from the education sector have had to spend time at home after a Covid-19 test. That is a lot of people at home, usually for two weeks, and they are missing out on their education. Sometimes that happens simply because there is no broadband in the area. We had teachers going into the car parks of county council offices, trying to get enough broadband to download some of the materials the Department was sending out as guidance. There is a long way to go, therefore. We have a €50 million ICT grant. We still do not know what is in the announcements from budget day or when it is coming so I share all of the Senator's concerns around that. The marginalised need to be put first because education is a great equaliser for them.