Jess Casey: Parents' confidence is ebbing but here are three key measures to improve school safety

Anthony Kerfoot (aged 8) from Dublin, with an anti-mask protest outside Leinster House. The protestors oppose a mask mandate for children in schools. Picture: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie

There’s been a terrible sense of deja vu seeping through December, with NPHET warnings, fresh restrictions and last-minute state of the nation addresses feeling all too familiar in the run-up to the ill-fated Christmas season last year.

We all remember what January 2021 brought. It was one of the lowest points in the country’s modern history and made all the worse with the closure of schools and creches.

With many parents fearing another return to homeschooling, the rumour mill, naturally, has gone into overdrive. Despite multiple education sources confirming that there is “absolutely no talk” of schools closing, this wasn’t appeased last week by the Taoiseach’s comments on getting schools to Christmas and then “recalibrating”.

Many, of course, saw this as a hint that we could see a repeat of last year. Public health strategies realise the importance of schools, and the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) advises that widespread closures should be seen as a last resort, only considered after other measures have been put in place to contain the spread.

Professor Conor O’Mahony, the Government’s Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, previously told this paper that "we need to really be able to look in the mirror and say we did everything in our power to make sure that schools could stay open safely.” In all honesty, there are more measures we could have that are not in place at the moment. 

• Bring back contact tracing

As cases skyrocket for children of primary school-going age, teachers, principals, and parents have been crying out for a system of contact tracing to be restored. Without it, there is little confidence that children are catching Covid anywhere else than outside of classrooms, and little credibility in the wider restrictions being introduced. What good is closing restaurants when people believe the virus is circulating in schools? 

• Communicate better

Any impact the antigen test programme will have will start to be seen in the coming weeks but we won't have data from this. Fear and poor communication were big factors in the mess that led to the closure of schools last January. The relationship between NPHET and the Government is prickly once again. Both have been poor communicators on the subject of schools. They need to address this, urgently. As well as trust being an essential component to keeping schools open, NPHET will be among the main voices parents will hear when it comes to the children’s rollout of vaccines. Data, and public health case studies, needs to be put front and centre. 

• Proactively provide HEPA filters

Winter only hits its first stride in December, and classrooms are freezing. Schools experiencing issues with ventilation can get assistance from the Department of Education, and it sees HEPA filters as an option for addressing poor ventilation, along with other measures such as making sure there's adequate mechanical ventilation. This is actual Government policy on the matter, despite what the Minister for Health spent last week parroting off about them not being recommended. But the process to apply is admin heavy, and a proactive campaign where the Department of Education reaches out to all schools to assess the situation may be a massive help here. Many principals praised the speed and scale of its response to schools during the summer of 2020, and this could be replicated in the coming weeks.