All schools to close until next Thursday

EDUCATION:ALL 4,000 primary and post primary schools are to close until next Thursday, Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe has said.

The Minister announced his decision following a meeting of the Government’s Emergency Response Committee yesterday.

The closure also applies to private schools, although boarding schools that have already opened may remain open if they wish.

Mr O’Keeffe said he took the decision in the interest of the welfare of school children. Primary and secondary schools around the country were due to reopen earlier this week, but approximately 80 per cent were unable to.

Some parts of the country fared better than others. While parts of Tipperary, Limerick, Cork and Waterford saw a majority of schools open, in Wexford and Donegal almost 100 per cent of schools were closed.

Met Éireann had earlier issued another severe weather warning and forecast snow of up to 10cm at the weekend.

The Minister said he took the decision to close the schools based on his concern for the health and safety of school children in “particularly exceptional circumstances and against a backdrop of extremely bad weather conditions”. “Although most schools decided not to open this week and many more will take the same decision next week, I wanted to bring clarity and certainty to the position for parents and students by telling all schools to close,” he said.

“While it may be that some schools would have been in a position to open depending on the weather, I consider on balance that the responsible and prudent approach at this stage is to close schools in the interest of safety.”

He said the situation would be reviewed on Tuesday. Higher education institutions will make their own decisions on whether to open based on local roads and weather conditions. Mr O’Keeffe said his department officials will be discussing with the education partners ways in which the impact of the closures can be minimised, particularly for examination classes.

General secretary of the Irish Vocational Education Association Michael Moriarty said if the bad weather continues it will generate a crisis in education.

“All of us as education partners need to be open to reviewing the possibility of making up the time lost, particularly for examination classes,” he said.

But unions have said there is little scope for schools to make up days lost due to the cold weather.

Irish National Teachers’ Organisation incoming general secretary Sheila Nunan welcomed the decision to keep schools closed until Thursday.

“With forecasts predicting more snow over the weekend, the last thing we needed was to see schools on Sunday afternoon still wondering if it would be safe for children to come back to school,” she said. Schools would make every effort to ensure classes lost would be made up, but she conceded that this would be more difficult the longer the cold spell persisted.

“Because of the standardised school year there is very little scope for schools to make up time lost,” she said. “However, regardless of how long school closures last, every school will do its utmost to make sure that the full curriculum is taught to all children.”

Asked whether post primary schools would be able to make up days lost through bad weather, a spokeswoman for the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland said schools’ calendars had already been set and exam times arranged.

“Schools will find it very difficult to manoeuvre around that,” she said. “However, teachers will ensure the syllabuses for all subjects are covered.”