Pupils back to school full time from the new term
Martine Mulhern from St Cecilia’s College says she’ll welcome pupils back, but has mixed feelings about their return.
“I am excited about them coming back but I feel frustrated about the lack of clarity and detail in the information we got yesterday,” she told BBC Radio Foyle.
“I am anxious as well about making sure we mitigate the risks.
“I still require more information about how we are going to do that.”
Her concerns and anxieity about the return of schools full time in just a few weeks is shared by a counterpart in Co Derry.
Peter Friel, who is principal of St Pius X College in Magherafelt, said there is still a “great deal of uncertainty” around how pupils returning will actually work.
Mr Friel said he “cautiously welcomed the decision” by Peter Weir to have pupils return five days a week and said that previous suggestions of maintaining social bubbles within schools would prove too problematic.
Mr Friel said in his particular school, they would require 45-50 bubbles if they were to adopt such a model.
He believes that some suggestions of limiting the movement of older pupils around schools cannot feasibly work in a secondary school setting.
