Some secondary schools are struggling with high student absenteeism rates which have jumped from 10 per cent before the Covid pandemic to 25 per cent today.
John Barry, president of the secondary school managers group the Joint Managerial Body, told a conference on Friday that there were concerns over third year students, in particular, who have out on crucial months of primary school and faced disruption at the start of second level.
“The immediate Covid wave may have passed but there is a huge long-term effect as a result of the pandemic on education, on our students and their families, and on our staff,” Mr Barry said.
“We see examples of this every day, and I think its effects are amplified in schools serving socially and economically disadvantaged communities.
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“The anxiety, stress, frustrations and anger that have built up are having a huge effect in our schools. Our absentee levels has increased from 10 per cent pre-Covid which was around the national average to over 25 per cent post Covid, despite us trying everything we could to bring it back to pre-Covid levels.”
He said students coming into schools from primary school have missed a significant amount of tuition time, which resulted in many falling behind on their literacy, numeracy and social skills.
“Our current third years missed four months at the end of sixth class, wore masks for nearly two years when they joined us, and lost more teaching and learning time due to the school closures and Covid related absenteeism,” he said.
In addition to learning loss, he said there is also evidence of high level of mental health issues due to factors such as trauma and recent reports of increases in online bullying, the vast majority of which occur outside of school.
He said the problems caused by cyberbullying attacks “arrive at our doors every day”, especially after a break.
“It is unreasonable to expect that our schools can solve these problems on our own as we cannot carry the can for the entirety of society’s problems, as many commentators seem to think,” he said.
Mr Barry also raised concern over what he said were the negative effects of young people’s “almost complete immersion” in social media.
“Three days in a row recently I had mothers talking to us of some of the awful experiences they were having with their daughters in relation to social media pressures, bullying, name-calling, threats, and exclusion.”
He said second school managers are seeking enhanced access to emotional counselling and therapeutic services to help deal with these and other mental health issues.
While a pilot scheme is due to get under way in primary schools, he said it is needed “more than ever” at post-primary level.
“We have a duty of care to our students and to our staff. We have a generation of students with huge needs in terms of anxiety, trauma recovery, behavioural challenges, and long-term career plan damage coupled with the effects on children who have had to leave their homelands due to war and conflict,” he said.
“Teachers are not qualified to deal with this regardless as to how good a tutor or year head is. Also, we have teachers who are dealing a lot more with their own anxieties.”
A modest investment now, he said, would bring “huge savings” into the future in our hospitals, psychiatric services, social services, clinics, and a decrease in social disorder.
“It will also help our gardaí and lower admissions to prisons. It is no good in 10 years’ time ringing our hands together and saying ‘it wasn’t like this in the good old days’,” he said.
