Decision to reopen rests with schools

SCHOOLS:MANY SCHOOLS are expected to reopen today after Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe reversed an earlier decision to keep schools closed for the first three days of the week because of the cold snap.

The Minister’s volte face was welcomed by primary school managers but slated by Fine Gael as a “humiliating climbdown”.

The majority of schools in Dublin are expected to reopen today but many schools in counties affected by snow are leaving it until tomorrow to resume. The overall situation is hard to assess because the decision on whether to open or close now rests again with individual schools.

Mr O’Keeffe announced the three-day closure last Friday and indicated at the weekend that he would not review it until today.

However, yesterday he issued a short statement saying he had decided that the normal arrangements should be reinstated whereby schools decide whether to open or close depending on local circumstances.

This meant that schools which were in a position to re-open today could do so.

Mr O’Keeffe said he based the decision on weather advice given to yesterday’s meeting of the Emergency Co-ordination Committee and “the unexpected rise in temperatures that has occurred in parts of the country”.

He defended his original decision and pointed out that it had been widely supported. “Seeing people in their thirties and forties falling on footpaths, it struck me on Friday that if a mother or a child had that kind of fall, knocking their head off the pavement, then we would have had a serious situation and people would be asking why didn’t I close the schools.”

Schools are now required to make up for the days lost but it is far from clear how this will be achieved. Paul Rowe, chief executive of Educate Together said school managers expected the days to be made up but the manner in which the Minister had ordered schools to close had raised “issues”.