St Ninian’s High School have announced that they have insufficient teachers available to offer a full slate of in-person schooling to Year 9 students today.
As we are still experiencing extremely high levels of staff absence at the moment and have now exhausted all other contingencies to manage this for the remainder of this week. (sic) We have had to once again make the very difficult decision for all Year 9 students to remain at home on Friday 4th February and not come in to school.
Year 9 Important Information
Three.FM reports further news from the Teachers’ Union, NASUWT:
Over half of secondary teachers are having to cover lessons for absent colleagues at least once a week, and only 15% felt their school takes their wellbeing seriously.
Dr Patrick Roach, General Secretary of the NASUWT, says the DESC must recognise, that without action, there is a risk of a work-related stress, anxiety and depression epidemic in schools.
Survey shows Island teachers are struggling
Contributing to the crisis situation, the Isle of Man Education Department has increased the number of non-teaching/lecturing staff by 40% over the last five years, with no increase in teaching/lecturing staff. This failure to ensure adequate teacher numbers is causing a schooling crisis where many students are not receiving in-person schooling.
Schooling is one of the most valuable services offered by Governments in our Anglo-civilisation. This crisis needs to be fixed urgently.