AQW 13404/17-22

Ms Kellie Armstrong
Alliance Party
Strangford

Tabled Date: 26/01/2021
Answered On Date: 04/02/2021
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Education (i) whether parents can access stocks of paper, pens and other resources held in schools; and (ii) whether his Department has ensured parents have been provided with details of what school resources are available for children completing school work at home.

Answer:

In theory, every school remains open (for Key Worker and Vulnerable children) and so any parent who needs to access paper, pens and other resources from schools, in order to support home learning, should be able to do so, upon request to the Principal.

However, the Education Authority (EA) does not have any sense of how individual schools have or have not communicated this possibility to parents, nor any sense of the extent to which such resources are actually needed. Some Cross Organisational Link Officers (COLOs) have reported that schools have provided paper based tasks and resources to support home learning, upon request from parents.

The need for a device is identified by schools and requests made by schools through the C2k exchange. Requests are met following the prioritisation process.