Leaving Cert students and teachers should be prioritised for vaccination to ensure the State exams go ahead, according to sportsman and school principal Colm O’Rourke.
It comes as Cabinet considers extending lockdown until early March with increased restrictions on international travel.
No decision has yet been made on the return to school; however, negotiations on the reopening of special education are still ongoing.
On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, County Meath All-Ireland winner Colm O’Rourke said vaccinating Leaving Cert students and staff provides a “simple solution” to the State exam issue.
“If you designate teachers as essential workers - and I think most people would agree that they are when you have up to one million people depending on schools being open - I think there is a very strong case to ensure teachers are vaccinated early,” he said.
“As well as that, if the Leaving Cert is so important that it gets so much airtime, I think it is only reasonable to say the Leaving Cert cohort should be vaccinated along with the teachers.”
He said the plan would allow people to prepare for the Leaving Cert with “no more publicity needed” in the coming weeks.
Mr O’Rourke, principal at St Patrick’s Classical School in Navan, said the calculate grades system that replaced last year’s exam should not be used again.
“I think it should go ahead in the written form it took in other years,” he said.
“I think what we saw last year, and I speak as a principal who had plenty of problems with it, is that the predicted grades are not the way forward and it has caused so many problems, not the least of which is a string of cases in the High Court.”
Leaving Cert
Many of this year’s Leaving Cert students will have spent a significant portion of the last two years learning from home; however, Mr O’Rourke said this year’s exam papers could be changed to take account of that.
“There is no reason why the paper should not take account for that,” he said. “More choice can be put in for students and maybe the course work that is going to be examined is shortened.
“It is only a matter of drawing up the Leaving Cert exam papers to take account of what students would have missed.”
Mr O’Rourke said he still expects the Leaving Cert to go ahead this year, noting that his own teachers “very keen to get back to school.”
“I am not a fan of the union as most people would know, the ASTI, so I would be very strongly advocating that we get our Leaving Certs back by February 22nd,” he said.
“And not just for three days a week, that’s another silly idea, get them in every single day. Get them in and let’s get back to class as usual.”
Safe schools
He did take issue with the Education Minister’s insistence that schools are safe places for students and teachers.
Minister Norma Foley has said the NPHET advice always said schools are safe – with health officials only asking for them to be closed to reduce the amount of movement associated with travelling to and from classes every.
Mr O’Rourke said the phrase ‘schools are safe’ can be ‘grating’ for teachers to hear.
“I am quite sure that if you are in Enniscorthy or Belmullet or Rathkeale or Monaghan or Dundalk or some of the places with the highest rates in the country, you wouldn’t feel safe going back into a school in that situation,” he said.
“It all depends on what the rate of transmission is in the local community.
“Not all places are safe and just because you bring them into school, young people into school doesn’t suddenly mean that it is a COVID-free zone.”
He said the advice “didn’t make sense to a lot of teachers who are quite frightened by the fact that this new variant seems to be more transmissible and there is a higher mortality rate.”
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