No extra money for schools’ phased return, says Minister Peter Weir

There will be no additional finances made available to schools to cope with the added pressures of resuming education on a phased basis this year, the Education Minister Peter Weir has said.
By Philip Bradfield
Published 22nd May 2020, 21:30 BST
Updated 22nd May 2020, 21:33 BST
PACEMAKER BELFAST 19/03/2020 Education Minister Peter Weir gives todays Covid 19 update to the media at Stormont. It comes as it was announced that Northern Ireland suffered its first Coronavirus death this morning. The patient was an elderly male who had underlying health problems and was being treated in a greater Belfast Hospital. PHOTO COLM LENAGHAN/PACEMAKER PRESSPACEMAKER BELFAST 19/03/2020 Education Minister Peter Weir gives todays Covid 19 update to the media at Stormont. It comes as it was announced that Northern Ireland suffered its first Coronavirus death this morning. The patient was an elderly male who had underlying health problems and was being treated in a greater Belfast Hospital. PHOTO COLM LENAGHAN/PACEMAKER PRESS
PACEMAKER BELFAST 19/03/2020 Education Minister Peter Weir gives todays Covid 19 update to the media at Stormont. It comes as it was announced that Northern Ireland suffered its first Coronavirus death this morning. The patient was an elderly male who had underlying health problems and was being treated in a greater Belfast Hospital. PHOTO COLM LENAGHAN/PACEMAKER PRESS

Mr Weir says that some pupils will return to school in late August. The phased return will use social distancing, smaller class sizes and pupils having to get used to a mix of teaching in school and learning remotely from home.

Students preparing for exams such as GCSEs, A-levels and primary school transfer tests will be the first to go back.

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Good Morning Ulster put it to him yesterday that teachers are concerned about the spread of the virus, children’s mental and coping with online learning and social distancing.

Mr Weir gave a written response on the matter saying: “It is very unlikely that there will be much additional resource available so what needs to be done will largely need to be done with existing expenditure and existing staff.”

He told the BBC: “I am not going to mislead people... the demands that are out there of public expenditure are such that the amount of money that the executive has could be spent twice over to try and meet this.

“I am not going to pretend to people that there is going to be a large pot of money... So we have got to be very inventive in what we do.”

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He rejected suggestions that only one in four pupils would be able to return to school on any given day, saying the details “will be worked out in next short period”.

He plans to have distributed 24,000 computers to pupils who do not have access to them at home and he insisted that some form of transfer tests would have to take place for primary school children. The minister could not give any guarantees on whether the entire next school year would be disrupted.

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Related topics:Peter WeirStudentsGCSEsBBCNorthern Ireland