THE principal of St. Michael’s College, Enniskillen, has praised the efforts of the school community as it continues to fight a Covid-19 outbreak and firmly believes that the best place for the students to continue their learning is at school.

Students in Year 12 and Year 14 have been forced to stay at home due an outbreak in the year groups, while staff have recently been affected by the virus.

“To my mind, all students are better off in school. That structure they have in school is very important to a lot of youngsters,” principal Mark Henry said.

But despite the setbacks at the school, Mr. Henry said everyone has shown huge resilience in making sure that life is as normal as possible for both the staff and students.

“There is no doubt there are an awful lot of Covid protocols in schools which are designed to keep us as safe as possible and minimise the pandemic’s spread within the school environment, but those protocols do cause disruption to the work of the school.

“There would be disruption to learning and teaching, in that we have teachers moving around the school that wouldn’t have previously.”

Teachers who would normally have their own classrooms now move from room to room to try and minimise the movement of traffic around the school.

“There is quite an added burden on the teachers, in terms of preparing for that, because some teachers might have four or five lessons in a row where they don’t get an opportunity to get back to the room and organise.

“So there is an awful lot more planning and organisation required by the teachers to prepare for a day’s teaching, because many are out of their own classrooms.

“The staff have risen to that challenge, and have done a brilliant job in the circumstances of maintaining a high level of teaching and learning – but make no mistake about it, it is challenging,” he said.

The commitment of the staff can be seen in the efforts to continue lessons with the year groups that are self-isolating.

“The staff in here have been delivering a full timetable of lessons at home every day. They have done a great job in terms of teaching online to the boys who have had to self-isolate at home.

“Whilst there has been disruption again, the fact that the staff have invested so much time in training and preparing for this means that disruption is a lot less than it could have been,” added Mr. Henry.

The St. Michael’s principal also praised the students for how they have responded to this ‘new normal’, and said he had sympathy with them, especially the Key Stage Three students.

“They are not benefitting from getting around the school, into science labs, into tech departments.

‘Significant restrictions’

“They are not getting the rich experience of practical work and hands-on work that they would get in those departments, because there are significant restrictions in terms of group work, and sharing equipment.

“They, again, despite the challenges for them, they have been brilliant as well.”

With so many schools across Fermanagh having to deal with Covid-19 outbreaks, Mr. Henry admits it is very hard to keep the school free of the virus despite the huge costs they incurred to make the facility as safe as possible.

St. Michael’s has invested in additional cleaning staff and sub teachers as well as sanitiser. And the school now has three ‘fogging’ disinfectant machines to try and curb the spread of the virus.

Mr. Henry added: “It’s very difficult for us to stop Covid coming in. There are a whole lot of protocols and things in place that, I would argue – given that we have got away [from Covid infections] right up until Hallowe’en – have worked very, very well for us.

“But ultimately, if there is community transmission, and we have 700 boys coming here from 600-odd families, it’s going to be very difficult to keep Covid out of the school.”