There should be a “delayed and staggered” reopening of schools as a result of the Omicron wave of Covid-19, a teachers’ union will tell the Minister for Education.

Unions and school management bodies will meet with public health officials, the Minister and Department of Education on Tuesday in advance of schools reopening on Thursday after the Christmas break.

There is unease among unions about the return to school due to the high levels of the disease in the community. But ministers and public health officials have said in recent days that they expect schools to reopen as planned.

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The Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) has said it is "deeply concerned" that schools may reopen without additional measures being put in place to protect students and staff.

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“This would constitute an unacceptable risk in the context of the Omicron wave. There is uncertainty regarding the impact in schools of this significantly more transmissible variant,” said the union.

The ASTI said it will be proposing a delayed and staggered reopening at Tuesday’s meeting, in which it said face-to-face teaching with exam years should be prioritised.

The union said it would also call for updated risk assessments to be presented to schools and a wider rollout of antigen tests to parents and children.

It is also calling for Hepa filtration units to be rolled out to schools, adding it "beggars belief that almost two years into this pandemic this basic facility is not in place where necessary".

Michael Gillespie, general secretary of the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI), said it was important to recognise that a one size fits all approach isn't going to work.

He said there will be some schools in which 80 per cent of teachers will be available to work, and others in which only 20 per cent are available.

“The education system is a system and there needs to be autonomy for schools to decide what’s best,” he said.

Mr Gillespie said TUI will be raising concerns about a need to increase the number of carbon dioxide monitors, to roll out Hepa filters and to publish ventilation guidelines for the reopening.

The INTO believes it will be necessary to utilise student teachers to substitute classes in the coming weeks, as a result of staff members being out on Covid-related leave.

John Boyle, general secretary of the union, said they want to see quicker response times and interventions from public health when multiple cases arise in primary schools.

Mr Boyle said the INTO will “simply not accept” any less public health protection for its members who are close contacts, than those protections available to thousands of other workers.

“To address the ongoing substitution crisis we believe that third and fourth year student teachers will have to be made available throughout the coming weeks to act in the place of teachers who are unable to attend their schools due to being close contacts or having contracted Covid-19,” he added.

Child protection

Earlier, the Government’s Special Rapporteur on Child Protection said the negative impact of school closures are “wider and deeper” than missing a few weeks of classes and are not a simple trade-off between education and health.

Prof Conor O'Mahony of University College Cork's Child Law Clinic said the evidence consistently shows that "the impact of school closures was not evenly spread; it fell disproportionately on the most marginalised and disadvantaged children".

Prof O’Mahony’s annual report, to be published this month, “documents the harm caused to children by school closures and lockdowns. This is multi-faceted, and has been documented in Ireland and internationally.”

Prof O’Mahony said while children have a right to health, a wide range of rights are adversely affected by school closures. “We need to take all practicable measures to mitigate the spread of Covid in schools,” he said.

Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One on Monday, he said: “We should be ensuring that we have exhausted every other possibility in terms of the various types of safeguards and mitigations that can be put in place in schools before we look at the option of school closures.

“What I am calling on the Government to do is to ensure that that is done rather than relying too readily on school closures and having Ireland again out of line with the international trend in closing our schools for longer than other comparable countries.”

In a series of posts on Twitter, he said: “I see people advocating for schools to remain closed in January. I can’t help thinking that those people’s position is informed by a view that children in their families/communities will be fine. Maybe they will – but a lot of other children won’t be.”

Outlining the impact of closures on children, Prof O’Mahony said closures affected children’s right to education as online learning cannot replace in-school lessons, especially for children with special needs or in marginalised communities with poor access to technology.

The lack of social interaction and recreational opportunities affected the right to development and the right to play, he said.

“School closures protected physical health but caused significant damage to the mental health of many children – particularly adolescents.

“For some children, the right to protection from violence was seriously compromised. Forced to stay in unsafe homes for extended periods, they were exposed to direct harm from abuse and neglect, and/or indirect harm from witnessing domestic abuse – which increased hugely,” said Prof O’Mahony.

He said schools were a key source of child protection referrals, and closures compromised the ability of social services to identify and respond to children at risk.

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan on Sunday said that schools will reopen as normal on Thursday notwithstanding the huge surge of coronavirus cases.

“I expect that schools and creches will open next week, colleges to open later [as scheduled],” said Mr Ryan.

“It is very important. The loss if we don’t have our children back in school is much larger than any other measure.”

He added: “I think it’s important that schools reopen on Thursday. What our schools have done very well is manage through Covid. [Over] the next few weeks, I don’t think the solution is shutting our schools.”