A primary school that has had to close due to concerns over the safety of the building’s roof will not reopen before Christmas, its principal has said.
Róisín Blackery, principal of Nazareth House Primary School in Londonderry, said specialist engineers were at the school site again on Monday.
The school closed on 3 December after an inspection of the roof found that it was unsafe.
The Education Authority (EA) has said urgent remedial works have been prioritised to allow it to reopen as soon as possible.
Speaking to Radio Foyle’s North West Today programme the principal said: “We will not be under our roof before Christmas.
“The aim is that we will all be learning face to face together at the start of January when we return after the Christmas holidays.”
She said the forced closure of the school had been especially difficult to take in the weeks before Christmas.
“It’s when we’re doing all the loveliest things and we’re connected and we’re joyful and we’re find it very challenging at the moment to be apart.”
Plans are now in place to accommodate the children daily in the Bishop Street youth club near the school site.
The club will provide a “well-being hub,” Ms Blackery said, and operate daily between 09:00 and 15:00 GMT.
“It’s not going to be a formal learning environment, it’s going to be as close as to what school feels like at this time of year,” she said.
The school’s carol service will go ahead, while pupils will come together for their Christmas dinner later this week with the support of local businesses.
Ms Blackery said that promised to be a “very special event” and they had been overwhelmed by the support of the local community and by offers from several local businesses to support pupils.
“I think when times get tough in Derry, you find that people really have your back,” she said.
The school has been operating on the Bishop Street site since 1902.
More than half of its 203 student body come from the Bogside, Bishop Street and Brandywell areas of Derry.
Last week parent Terri Lamberton, who has two children at the school – seven-year-old Daniel, who has special educational needs, and 10-year-old daughter Gail – said she was worried about the impact of the school’s closure.
She said they were “devastated and concerned at how long this was going to go on for”.
In a statement, the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools’ (CCMS) said it was working alongside the Department of Education and the EA to put in place “arrangements for supervised learning for families who need it until the Christmas holidays and for all pupils to return to face to face classes in January”.
“The EA maintenance service is assessing the remedial works required to reopen the school premises,” the CCMS said.
‘A ministerial priority’
Speaking in the Assembly on Monday, the Sinn Féin MLA for Foyle Pádraig Delargy called on the Education Minister Paul Givan to visit the Derry school.
Delargy said there were two schools whose roofs had collapsed or were in need of urgent repair in the city.
He said it would not be lost on people in Derry how that could be so when another school “received a fourth pitch” – a reference to a row earlier this year over funding for a school football pitch at Lisneal College in the city.
“This should be a ministerial priority, the minister should be meeting with us as local elected representatives, the minister should be in Derry meeting with schools and the minster should be answering parents, giving them certainty on what happens next for the children of Nazareth House.”
Last week, Ms Blackery said concern over the school building has been “an ongoing issue going back as far as the early 2000s”.
She said the school submitted a business case for a new roof to the EA in 2017, but it was “not actioned”.
The Department of Education has been asked for comment.