Supporting Parents to Support their Children’s Mental Health & Wellbeing
- Published: 24 November 2021
National Parents Council Primary in conjunction with St Patrick's Mental Health service, are providing an online training programme for parents to encourage and promote positive mental health and wellbeing in their children. The programme also explores how the building of resilience in children helps them to manage and cope with the day-to-day stresses of life as they occur.
Training Session Dates: Monday, 29 November, Wednesday, 1 November, Thursday, 2 November
Time: 10.00am & 7.30pm
EducationPosts.ie: Change to Advertising Process
- Published: 24 November 2021
On Friday, 26 November all new paid adverts uploaded to EducationPosts.ie from existing accounts will automatically go live on the website after 30 minutes. (Note: based on the requested activation date on the advert). This update will streamline the vacancy advertising process, as restrictions on advert activation outside of office hours will be removed. A school can amend/edit their advert(s) within 30 minutes of submission. After this time, a replacement advert will require an additional EducationPosts.ie credit.
Revised Inspection Arrangements
- Published: 24 November 2021
In the latest Information Note issued by the DE to schools, the inspection programme for schools has been revised for schools from today, Thursday 25 November. Inspection activity will be confined to five main areas:
- Child Protection Inspections
- Inspections of schools located in Special Care Units and Child Detention Centres
- Essential follow-up inspections to monitor the implementation of urgent recommendations arising from previous child protection and other inspections
- Advisory-focussed Sustaining Safe Provision of Schooling (SSPS) visits
- Urgent emergency visits to schools.
Informing School Community of a Covid-19 Case
- Published: 24 November 2021
The issue of whether or not a school leader should inform parents / guardians of a Covid case has generated much anxiety in recent weeks. The central issue for many school leaders, teachers and parents lies in their desire not to identify a child or staff member who has to be absent because of Covid 19. In addition to not wishing to identify a person or family, there are GDPR considerations forbidding the sharing of personal data without consent.
School leaders have come under a lot of pressure from parents, staff and even Boards of Management to release the personal data of individuals to the school community. The templates below are an amalgam of templates submitted by IPPN members which seek to:
- Reassure parents / guardians that the BoM and school leadership is taking all possible precautions to keep children and staff safe
- Inform parents / guardians that a case of Covid has been confirmed within the school
- Ask parents to be vigilant and alert for symptoms of Covid in their children.
IPPN strongly urges school leaders to discuss the contents of these letters with the Chairperson of their BoM before sending them to parents. Best practice would be to have the signatures of both Chairperson and Principal on the letters. Ideally the use of these letters would be discussed and approved by the BoM, where time permits, prior to communicating with parents.
The use of mandatory template 1 for child safeguarding statement
- Published: 18 November 2021
The following changes have been made to the mandatory template that schools must use for their child safeguarding statement:
- Heretofore there were two separate templates one for risk assessment and one for child safeguarding statement (mandatory template 1 and mandatory template 2).
These have now been combined into one template which includes both the child safeguarding statement and the risk assessment (mandatory template 1) - The English language template is available in landscape and portrait versions here
- Tá an leagan Gaeilge anseo
- The child safeguarding statement must be signed and dated once it is adopted by the board and then each year to indicate that the review has taken place
- The requirement to sign it annually applies even if the school has made no change to the statement including the risk assessment arising from the review
- These changes were announced in April 2021 and came into effect for schools when their next annual review was due. Therefore if a school completed its annual review on March 1st 2021, they can continue to use the existing templates for child safeguarding statement and risk assessment until March 1st 2022 at the latest.
Following recent engagement with our education partners, Parents and Learners Unit have decided to provide a further lead in period between now and 31st January 2022 for schools to use the new mandatory template. From 31st January 2022 schools will be required to use the new mandatory template from the date of their next annual review.
The Inspectorate has been informed of PLU’s decision to provide a further lead in period. These means that a school will be found compliant with the following check ‘the Child Safeguarding Statement has been ratified by the board and includes an annual review and a risk assessment’ If the child safeguarding statement has been reviewed by the board but is on the old mandatory template.
Schools that reviewed their child safeguarding statement and continued to use the old mandatory template will be expected to use the new mandatory template 1 from the date of their next annual review.
