Minister for Education Norma Foley appeared on RTÉ today to lie once again about the prevalence of COVID-19 in schools. This time she claimed that 90,000 antigen tests sent out to schools returned a 3.6% positivity rate.
However, information about the tests from the HSE reveals that this is totally false. 90,000 antigen kits (each with 5 individual tests) were dispatched to close contacts in a school setting. 8,170 results were reported. Of these, 4,867 were negative and 3,303 were positive. Subsequently, 1,873 cases were detected with PCR tests.
This would indicate a 40% positivity rate on the antigen tests. This is not to say that this is a reliable figure for the incidence of COVID-19 in schools – these were close contacts of confirmed cases, those with positive tests may have been more likely to report them, and there may be other factors that explain the figure.
But what is certain is that Minister Foley’s figure of a 3.6% positivity rate has absolutely no basis in reality whatsoever.
In the same interview, Minister Foley told us that “children are best served when in school”, and that “children are disadvantaged when they don’t have the opportunity to receive in person teaching and learning”.
She is absolutely right.
What a scandal it is, therefore, that the Minister and this government continue to fail teachers, children and parents alike when it comes to making schools safe, and continue to lie about what is happening when it comes to the spread of Covid-19 in our schools.
In almost every area that would have improved safety in the lead up to the first school term in September, the government failed. They didn’t provide resources for ventilation. They didn’t build new classrooms, leaving many children in prefabs. They didn’t hire new teachers so as to reduce class sizes. At the end of term they finally conceded on HEPA filters, providing €62 million for “minor works”. But even here, they are forcing schools to go and source their own HEPA filters rather than providing them directly.
In the new year we – teachers, parents, and the wider community -need to fight for a radically different approach that takes every measure necessary to make schools as safe as possible. This government will continue to fail us otherwise.