Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the publication of yesterday's roadmap for reopening schools. However, it is too little too late and it is light on detail. It is also a missed opportunity to address our spiralling pupil-teacher ratio, which is one of the highest in the OECD. Throughout this pandemic, we have seen the value of front-line workers. It is time for the Government to show its appreciation of them. A clap once a week does not pay the bills and it does not put a roof over their heads. We need to end the two-tier pay system for teachers and provide pay equality for school secretaries. Our pupils and teachers deserve better. We need to engage with teachers on the return to school, consult them and listen to and address their concerns. We need to provide more support for teaching principals in particular. They cannot be expected to project-manage the reopening of schools and keep up with the inevitable avalanche of paperwork while teaching classes four or five days a week. We need to look at how transition year will function in our new normal. We need a specific plan for schools in the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, DEIS, programme. A total of 25% of schools in my county of Kildare are DEIS schools. We must protect and enhance the extra support provided to those schools.

The plan to return to school mentions using existing space better. Our schools are already at breaking point, with long delays in the schools building programme. St. Paul's school in Monasterevin is long overdue a new building. For more than 20 years, the school management has been doing its best, adding prefab after prefab and using the sports hall to host classes. Eighteen of its 27 classrooms are prefabs. Coláiste Íosagáin in Portarlington has almost 30 prefabs. I spoke in the House a number of weeks ago about St. Anne's special school in the Curragh and how an algorithm had decided it was to lose two teachers. I have been in contact with the Department of Education and Skills to seek a reversal of this cut. Unfortunately, the teachers who were let go have moved on, leaving a deficit of experience that cannot be easily replaced.

I ask the Minister to revisit the back to school plan to ensure the voices of children of different abilities, and their families, are heard. She must liaise with those families because every time there is an announcement, they are left behind. That needs to change. We must fast-track the roll-out of broadband and ensure schools and pupils are provided with the technology required to do things differently. We need to ensure families in direct provision are given the supports they require to make sure they are not left behind.

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