Teachers in Clare have expressed concern over a lack of supports for schools, following a change to rules surrounding contact tracing for under 12s.
Primary school children and those in creches won’t have to restrict their movements from next week, if they’re close contacts and have no symptoms.
Thousands of children have been missing school up until now as they have been deemed close contacts.
The HSE says covid testing in the past week has been at one of its highest levels to date.
It says children represent a huge volume of this testing, but the positivity rate is declining.
Health officials are concerned that thousands of healthy schoolchildren with no covid symptoms are out of school as they’re close contacts.
Martin Cormican from the HSE says it’s for this reason, the rules for close contacts are changing.
But the INTO some parents and principals are terrified about the changes and feel they’re premature.
The teacher’s union says the positivity rate in primary schools is 2 and half times more than it was last year.
Clare INTO Representative, Brendan Horan believes things need to be ironed out before any changes are made and that it would be better to wait until after the mid-term break to implement any changes.
The Chief Medical Officer says it’s the right time to change the approach, given the importance of education, something one Clare teacher agrees with.
Member of Management at Mol an Oige National School, Hillary Gillespie insists that with the success of the vaccination programme, it’s time to move forward.
But she believes more supports need to be given to schools and principals.
