During the entirety of what has been dubbed ‘The New Normal’, which has lasted almost a year at this stage, great attention has rightly been paid to the stress and labour exerted by our frontline workers in the medical field, retail, transport, community work and of course teachers. Indeed these frontline workers have been lauded as heroes and venerated by media campaigns. The teaching profession has also gotten a fair share of praise for having to adapt at a moment’s notice and in light of the fact that there was no clear, thought-out directive on how things were supposed to work (much of which has possibly come from parents undergoing the somewhat traumatic experience of trying to home school). However, similar to the good will that was expressed to the frontline student nurses who were asked to ‘pull on the green jersey’, this good seems to only extend as far as platitudes and token gestures without much in the way of concrete support.
I am working as a teacher in a school in the west of Ireland and am currently looking at the Covid 19 figures from yesterday the 20th February 2021 as I write this article; 988 new cases and 26 deaths. To put this figure into perspective, when schools were initially closed around the 12th of March last year the number of cases reported was around 39 and the peak after that briefly reached approximately 1,500 cases but hovered around the 800-900 mark around the month of April when we hit our first peak. As I type this Special Needs Assistants, teachers as well as other necessary staff required for the proper running of school facilities are expected to return to teach a ‘small proportion’ of students. At the same time as this planned partial reopening, Phillip Nolan from NPHET has declared that judging by current figures it is unlikely that the Republic will reach new case numbers below 100 until April https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/new-covid-19-case-numbers-may-not-fall-below-100-per-day-until-april-1.4490890.
Back in September (https://www.thejournal.ie/micheal-martin-new-roadmap-prioritise-education-5203645-Sep2020/) all of the musings from government were that schools remaining opened would be a ‘priority’; not saving lives or ensuring that students needs were met or that parents weren’t punished financially for having to homeschool. This has been the largest driving force behind the government and Norma Foley’s staggering from one position to another, stating that they were going to open the schools earlier this year without consultation and then being met with resistance and having to back track. Our government has opted for Putinesque style of governance where things are leaked and then other things are leaked and then when those leaks don’t pan out something else is leaked, and everyone knows what happens to leaky ships.
This of course has a huge impact on the stress that SNAs and teachers and everyone else involved in the education of our young people experience but probably an even bigger impact on the students themselves. As the government has prioritised the economy, and as part of that the freeing up of parents from homeschooling to return to having their labour exploited by their employers, lip service has been paid to the needs of students. Last year’s Leaving Cert students were told that they would get 100% for the oral component of their Irish for example (I’m sure some contemplated going to higher level just based on that) only to have that taken away when the decision was taken to use a predictive grade system, something which had regrettable results in this country and in the UK.
Students of this Leaving Cert year are now left in the invidious situation where they don’t really know how they will be assessed or whether they will be able to go to college as per usual next year and of course all in the face of particularly daunting numbers of Covid cases. The assumption surrounding Covid seems to still be ‘ah sure they’ll be grand, they’re young, Covid doesn’t affect them’ although there is evidence of adolescents with no underlying health conditions succumbing to the virus in the UK https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/teenager-16-no-underlying-conditions-19880988. Also, the government’s attitude seems to assume that teenagers mingle exclusively with other teenagers who have no underlying health conditions when they of course may have relatives who are higher risk.
What the young people of the nation (as well as the rest of the country) need more than anything right now is a sense of direction and leadership. The uncertainty surrounding Covid’s impact on the leaving certificate is having as much of a mental health impact as lockdown has had on the nation I would wager and if students at least knew that there was some sense of certainty in regards at least how they will finish their second level education, it would be one less burden of worry on their minds. The government has prioritised ‘getting the economy back running’ instead of the actual real needs of students, parents and teachers, all the while allowing people into the country carrying new forms of the virus to facilitate the meat industry https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/infectious-diseases-expert-believes-there-are-more-cases-of-brazilian-variant-in-ireland-1084586.html. Ireland needs a zero Covid approach and the opening of schools in a climate where the numbers are so high and we still have not engaged similar successful policies which have been employed to great effect in countries such as New Zealand. In addition to this, students in Ireland need direction and certainty, not leaks and staggered decisions.
