O'Rourke: Teachers will do all they can to get schools ready

Colm O'Rourke, the principal of St Pat's Classical School in Navan has said teachers will do everything they can to get school life back to normal but warned that social distancing was a non-runner.

“We will do everything as administrators to have as safe an environment as possible," he told Sarah McInerney on RTE radio this week..

Mr O'Rourke said the recruitment of extra teachers to help cope with the extra demands and changes to school life will be problematic and suggested that scrapping the Professional Master of Education (PME) course which aims to prepare new entrants for the teaching profession who are subject experts in their chosen discipline would help alleviate the issue.

“PME should be reduced to one year and it should be free. It would entice back in a lot of people who weren't able to afford to do PME's and release the second year students from the PME courses to be the backup that we need."

And the former All-Ireland winning footballer says that the concept of managing social distancing in schools as large as St Pat's is a 'non-runner'.

"We will do our best but the whole idea of social distancing is a non-runner. You will have students mixing on a narrow corridors in old schools, in toilets, in locker rooms and canteens, that's a non-runner, but we must get on with it as best we can.

I think schools too and the whole school community has to act as the pod and parents have to take responsibility to ensure that students are not going abroad on holidays in the last two weeks of August and to make sure that they keep within safe groupings."