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Principal 'angered and saddened' by school roof safety closure

Gerry BradleyBBC News NI
News imageBBC Róisín Blackery stands outside Nazareth House Primary School in Derry. She is wearing a light grey winter coat, and yellow jumper. She is standing in front of a blue gate and the red brick building can be seen behind herBBC
Principal Róisín Blackery says work is ongoing to determine when pupils can return to the Derry school

The principal of a Londonderry primary school has said she is "angered and saddened" it has had to close due to concerns about its roof.

Róisín Blackery, principal of Nazareth House Primary School, said they had continually raised concerns about the structural safety of the 122-year-old building over the last 20 years.

She said the school submitted a business case for a new roof to the Education Authority (EA) in 2017, but it was "not actioned".

Following the school's closure on Wednesday, the EA said it was urgently prioritising remedial works to allow it to reopen as soon as possible.

"This is unfortunately the latest example of children's education being disrupted due to deterioration in the school estate," it added.

The school has been operating on the Bishop Street site since 1902, Mrs Blackery told BBC News NI, with more than half of its 203 student body coming from the Bogside, Bishop Street and Brandywell areas of Derry.

Concern over the school building has been "an ongoing issue going back as far as the early 2000s".

"We have been concerned about patches of damp about all sorts of ramifications of damp wallpaper peeling off the walls and things like that," she said.

"Calls have been continually raised with the EA regarding the problems."

News imageShows a school with a gate giving the name as Nazareth House primary school
The Education Authority says doing the work to have the school reopened is a priority

In an earlier video message to parents, Mrs Blackery had said: "Yesterday some building experts came into our school to check the roof and unfortunately they discovered the roof isn't very safe and as soon as I heard that I asked about the safety of all of our children under the roof.

"We decided the building experts need to do a wee bit more work and a bit more checking before we know what is safe for you."

She told BBC News NI the school has "a lot of anxious children at home who don't like change".

"My message is we need funded properly. Our teachers have been shouting, our families have been shouting for years upon years," she said.

She said a multi-agency meeting involving the EA, Department of Education and the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) had taken place on Wednesday.

"For the time being, the investigative work is ongoing and indeed children can't be in the building while that work is ongoing," the principal said.

Mrs Blackery added: "We are actively seeking an appropriate and an acceptable solution in order to house our children as soon as possible either here on site or in another site if necessary."

'Increasingly unsustainable position'

The EA said it was "deeply concerned" at the growing school maintenance and repair backlog across Northern Ireland due to lack of funding for the education sector.

"As a result of current budgetary restrictions, we are only able to carry out emergency maintenance works," a spokesperson said.

"This is an increasingly unsustainable position.

"Without significantly increased levels of funding, school buildings will continue to decline, increasing the potential for further disruption to classes."