16th March 2021
INTO Northern Secretary, Gerry Murphy has responded to the decision to accelerate the wider re-opening of schools, saying:
“The Education Minister, Peter Weir MLA, has trashed the last vestiges of his reputation with the teaching profession this evening. It is these hard-working teachers who deliver the thing that matters, the advancement of our children’s education, and they continue to do so in the midst of a pandemic and in the face of ineffectual and weak leadership.
The latest example of this poor leadership is the reneging on an undertaking, the teaching unions secured from his Departmental officials that schools would receive 10 working days’ notice in advance of any changes regarding a fuller re-opening of schools. Instead, our primary schools will have only two working days’ notice not the ten they were promised.
This evening’s changes will further compound the difficulties already being experienced in post-primary schools struggling to come to terms with the additional administrative overload associated with producing centre determined grades. Already stressed teachers and school leaders in post-primary schools will have to now begin putting in place the necessary conditions to facilitate safe learning environments for post-primary students. And these, already exhausted teachers and school leaders across our system will rise to this latest challenge because they care.
This wider re-opening of schools is being couched in a narrative that is about making up for lost learning. This is yet another failure in leadership on the part of the Department of Education and its Minister. Our children and young people need time to settle back into the routine of schools, they will need to be nurtured, be assessed, and have their mental well-being taken into consideration. Only when this pastoral work has been completed will it be time to begin the recovery curriculum that will clearly be needed.”
Mr Murphy concluded by saying:
“It is too late to salvage Peter Weir’s reputation as Minister of Education but there is still time, with proper leadership and the goodwill of the teaching profession to meet the emotional and educational needs of our children and young people. Both they and their teachers deserve better from a bureaucracy and a Minister whose limitations have been thrown into sharp focus by this pandemic.”