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The Education Minister, Joe McHugh, has said it is too early to say how schools will reopen fully in September due to the need for social distancing.<\/p>\nThe Education Minister, Joe McHugh, has said it is too early to say how schools will reopen fully in September due to the need for social distancing.<\/p>\n
Schools and colleges have been shut since March in a bid to slow the spread of coronavirus.<\/p>\n
Miniter McHugh told RTE\u2019s The Week In Politics program he has set up an advisory group to examine the issue and the group will work towards opening schools.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cNPHET (National Public Health Emergency Team) advice is that schools will reopen in September, so the question is now how can we do that in a safe way and I think it is too early to say how that will look. But that is the job we have started and we will continue to work our way through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if schools reopening would mean smaller classes or start times being staggered, he said: \u201cWe are trying to give as much clarity as possible and the last thing I want to be doing in the month of May is to say exactly what this will look like. That is why I want to have a proper consultation about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am going to work with the advisory group that I have set up and that work is going to continue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to work with all the stakeholders and I have already started the conversation a number of weeks ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith a lot of the stakeholders, whether it is post-primary or primary, we are going to work towards opening the schools.<\/p>\n
It was announced on Friday that the Leaving Certificate examinations will not go ahead this summer as a result of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Instead, students will have the option of receiving grades calculated by their teachers based on their school work.<\/p>\n
Students have the option to sit the exam at a later date but it will not be in time for when colleges open in September.<\/p>\n
Mr McHugh rejected accusations of unfairness about the new system and said students from all types of schools will be treated fairly.<\/p>\n
He said: “I want to categorically say that any student, just because they go to a certain school, that they will be marked any differently to anyone else is just not the case<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could have a situation where once a principal sends off the results of any school, whether it is a community school, a Deis school, a private school, where the system will look at some students maybe marked too harshly, some students could be marked leniently, there will be different evaluations.\u201d<\/p>\n