Education minister Norma Foley is among the speakers at Fórsa’s annual education division conference, which is taking place on a virtual basis today. You can watch the event HERE from 10.30am.

The conference will likely be overshadowed by last week’s Government decision to remove special needs assistants (SNAs) and other school-based staff from the Covid-19 vaccine priority list. The fallout from this move has dominated this week’s teacher conferences, as well as news bulletins.

Fórsa wrote to the Taoiseach last week to say that SNAs should be included under ‘category nine’ of its revised vaccine schedule, which includes people aged 16-64 who work in crowded settings.

The conference will also address a wide range of education issues including the union’s campaign for a revised minimum SNA qualification, the school secretary and caretakers’ pay justice campaign, and school completion service funding.

Delegates will also discuss motions on Covid-related special leave, bereavement leave in higher education, the new technological universities, and NETB staffing.

Fórsa president Michael Smyth and INTO general secretary John Boyle will also speak at the event.

The union represents more than 15,000 education staff including special needs assistants, school secretaries and caretakers, school completion staff, as well as clerical, administrative, management staff in institutes of technology, technological universities and education and training boards.

We’ll have full conference reports in the next issue of this bulletin.