At a meeting of the education stakeholders today, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) once again stated that the Department of Education must provide clear guidance and access to expertise on ventilation and related issues on an ongoing basis so that schools can best use the resources made available. The union also made clear that if individual schools require additional funding over and above what has been provided for such solutions, this must immediately be made available.
The union also wants the Department to proactively investigate and invest in any solutions that would further boost safety in the months ahead.
TUI has repeatedly made the point that that as a result of historic underinvestment by international standards, Irish schools have been forced to tackle the huge challenges of COVID-19 with large class sizes, over-stretched pastoral support systems for students and education facilities often unsuited to modern teaching and learning.
This systemic malaise must be remedied through a significant multi-annual increase in education funding and dedicated capital budgets for school building programmes from the next Budget onwards.