28th January 2021
INTO, Ireland’s largest teaching union, has welcomed the Department of Education’s advice that schools, ‘are expected to remain open during the current phase of restrictions, but this is exclusively for the purpose of accommodating supervised learning for children of key workers and vulnerable children.’
Mr Mark McTaggart, INTO, Assistant Northern Secretary, said:
“This advice from the Department of Education can only be taken one way and that is that school principals and their staff should only safely attend school for business-critical reasons and therefore should take no part in the organisation or administration of any assessment of pupils requested by parents or post-primary schools in their primary school setting. Principal members who are asked to facilitate tests or requests of this nature should advise their Board of Governors that they are unable to do so.”
Mr McTaggart continued:
“Members are further advised that, while parents are entitled to request the results of any standardised tests that have already been carried out by schools, they should reject any request either by parents or other schools, to use such results to rank order pupils, or to report any performance related assessments of pupils in any other form that are outside the normal practice of the school in which they work.”
Mr McTaggart concluded:
“Consequently, both these hard working INTO principal members and their teachers are reminded that they are not required to sign any documentation to authenticate any scores for the purpose of selection by post-primary schools. Information to parents should only be given in the customary fashion as previously used by the school pre COVID-19.”