Noel Loftus, principal of St Attracta’s National School in Ballaghdereen, Co Roscommon, is still counting the cost of a week without electricity in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn.
It was the third enforced closure of the academic year. The school lost two days following Storm Darragh in December, four days due to snow and ice and five days following last week’s power cuts.
School attendance at the school – designated as disadvantaged or Deis – has “collapsed”, he says, after making significant progress over recent times. Teachers are also under pressure to catch up with literacy and numeracy targets.
The school isn’t alone. By the end of last week some 322 schools had been without power for a week. Numbers fell to 150 early this week – mostly in the Galway, Mayo, Leitrim and Roscommon area. On Thursday of this week a single school in Curry, Co Sligo was without power.
A total of about 10,000 homes, meanwhile, have yet to be reconnected. A spokesman for ESB Networks said “full restoration is within our sights”.
Many school leaders, however, say they feel they were left adrift by authorities with little contact or evidence that their needs were being prioritised since the storm hit.
Some say there is an urgent need to provide emergency access to generators or to ensure schools are at the front of the queue for reconnection in the event of future power outages.
“It’s caused consternation,” says one deputy principal of a school in Mayo, who asked not to be named. “Students were facing into mocks and parents were stressed out. We weren’t able to give any guarantees when power would be back.”
While power is back, the enduring effects of closures linger.
“The school day and year is short, the curriculum is broad and the needs of the children are extensive,” Loftus says.
“We’ve been shocked at the impact [of school closures]. When children are not in school, we can’t progress their learning to the targets we have. We have a significant cohort of disadvantaged children – Roma children and others.
“Attendance is something we work really hard on. But when you lose that connection with school it takes a long time to build it back up.”
To make up for lost tuition time, he says in-school teacher training and sports activities are being postponed to allow for “class contact catch-up time”.
There is lingering frustration, meanwhile, among school leaders. Principals say they accept adverse weather conditions will pose challenges, but many feel urgent lessons need to be learned to ensure schools are not left for weeks without power.
“There will be other storms and I don’t want to close for a fourth time. If schools can’t get power restored quickly, can there be access to generators?” Loftus says.
Minister for Education Helen McEntee said this week she has asked her department to see how authorities can work more quickly to get a better picture of the volume of schools affected and provide speedy access to generators where possible.
A spokesman for ESB Networks said it appreciated the frustration of school communities and it had worked closely with the Department of Education to make progress in the face of “unprecedented” circumstances.
For now, Loftus says, staff are left asking where schools stand in the eyes of authorities.
“We’re an award-winning school in sport and music with a range of highly successful initiatives in literacy and numeracy. It’s for these reasons we feel so strongly about feeling locked out of our school, without any urgency on the part of Government to respond to our plight.
“It makes you feel you’re less significant despite the role we play in the lives of children. Rural schools were left to drift. Would this happen in Blackrock in Dublin? I don’t think so.”
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