Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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My Department has published a suite of helpful guidance for the safe and sustainable reopening of schools. Each school is required to have a COVID-19 Response Plan for the safe operation through the prevention, early detection and control of COVID-19 in line with public health advice. This guidance is focused on the practical steps schools must take to minimise the risk of transmission of infection.

Increasing separation and decreasing interaction is the basis of which physical distancing is achieved in schools in so far as is practicable. My Department has published helpful templates for schools on classroom layout to increase separation to the greatest degree possible.

The objective is to limit contact between children in different class bubbles and pods as much as possible rather than to avoid all contact between pods as this will not always be possible. In this regard pupils in special classes should continue to interact, or integrate, with mainstream classes.

However, the number of mainstream classes with which each special class pupil integrates should be minimised, in order to maintain pod grouping to the greatest extent possible, and to assist contact and tracing mechanisms, should this become necessary.

At primary school level this may mean each special class pupil integrating with one mainstream class only.

At post-primary school level, this may mean special class pupils attending only those mainstream classes necessary for their subject participation.