CHILDREN in over 30 primary schools face serious safety risks because of health, fire and other hazards in their schools, according to a teachers' survey.
The Irish National Teachers' Organisation yesterday published a list of 47 schools which it said were seriously substandard. About 55 per cent of these schools were infested by rats or mice and 75 per cent had identified health or safety hazards for pupils.
These included one school which had an unprotected 15 foot drop in the playground and another which had a playground open to a main road. Other schools surveyed had old or dangerous wiring, inadequate fire exits and water unfit to drink.
More than 60 per cent of the sub standard schools had rotting windows or doors while 36 per cent had outside toilets; 77 per cent did not have adequate handwashing or drying facilities and a further 23 per cent did not have adequate heating.
For the purposes of the survey, primary schools were asked to complete a checklist which included the worst possible features which a school could have, including outdoor toilets, unsanitary conditions and evidence of rodent infestation.
"It is an embarrassment to have to draw attention once again to the worryingly unsafe state of some of our primary schools" said Senator Joe O'Toole, the INTO's general secretary. "Children are still attending schools which are vermin infested, inadequate in terms of hygiene and hazardous from the point of view of health and safety." Mr O'Toole said no other education sector had to cope with similar underfunding.
The 85 pupil Kilglass National School at Ahascragh, near Ballinasloe, Co Galway is one of the schools on the INTO list. According to its principal, Mr Michael Nee, the school has not been renovated since 1939 and is "absolutely run down" with no ventilation, overcrowding, outside toilets and rats.
"Ventilation is non existent," said Mr Nee. "To get proper ventilation we have to open the door. The windows are in such a state that they are liable to fall apart if we try to open them.
"There are holes in the floors and for the last two winters we have had rats in the place. The problem is about to recur because we have outside toilets and one of the children recently said they saw a rat in them."
The toilets are unheated and have only two washbasins. Two of the six storage heaters in the school are not working and two portable electric heaters have been bought instead.
"It's totally frustrating," said Mr Nee. "To be honest, the board of management, the parents and the teachers are considering a strike because of it." The school was on the list of buildings to be renovated by the Department of Education in 1996 but no work has been done on the school this year.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said 17 of the schools on the INTO's list were already on the Department's building programme and had been approved for construction work. She said the other schools would be checked against the Department's list of schools scheduled for minor work.
The spokeswoman said that a similar INTO list published in 1993 had 167 schools listed, of which only 14 remained on the new list. She said 90 major projects were due for completion this year at a cost of £30 million. Since 1993 over £90 million had been invested in the programme.