All sixth year students at a Donegal girls school have been told to stay home for their last two days after a water balloon fight.
With 19 days to the start of the Leaving Cert exams, final year students at Loreto school in Letterkenny will not be back inside a classroom before the exams begin.
Sheila, a mother whose daughter was sent home until June, said her daughter “was an angel” and wasn’t involved in the water balloon action but “she was sent home and was devastated".
Speaking to Joe Duffy on RTE's Liveline, she said: “The girls in her class, the teachers, the parents are all devastated...there was no need for that severe of a reaction.”
Nobody was injured but the behaviour of the pupils led Principal Sr Geraldine Mullen to send the whole year home and suspend some of the girls.
Sheila added: “These girls have been through so much. They’re releasing this energy. They’ve never seen a psychiatrist after all the things they’ve been through, and yet this is what they get as a thank you for their six years of hard work… it’s terrible.”
Sheila said that the deputy principal told the girls “that’s it girls, you’re no longer back in here".
The school issued a message by text to parents about the “worrying incident".
“This decision was made to ensure adherence to Covid guidelines and the safe running of the LC exams,” the school said.
Sheila says that when parents arrived at the school to collect their daughters’ belongings, the school wouldn’t let them in.
She explained that there is no history of indiscipline in the school that could explain such a harsh reaction.
She added: “I know a lot of these girls and they are the nicest, well-mannered (girls)...they don’t deserve this.”
Another guest came on-air with a similar story where 13 pupils were suspended after a single water balloon was thrown at his daughter’s school in Dublin.
Gerald’s daughter was sent home from school last Wednesday and has been told she cannot attend her graduation.
The annoyed dad said that the decision was uncalled for.
He said: “What they’ve went through the last year and a half as Leaving Cert students, it’s been an emotional rollercoaster for them. To be treated like that… is very severe and over-the-top.”
He said “to leave school like that” has left his daughter “riddled with anxiety” with just over two weeks to go until she sits her exams.
Duffy said he understood the parents’ frustration “in terms of (the students’) last few days together where they’re talking, thinking, helping each other… it’s a very very anxious time".
Sheila has appealed to the school, the board of education, the Minister for Education and a local TD to get her daughter back in school for her last day “to celebrate themselves and the teachers and be celebrated” after surviving a disrupted school experience during the pandemic.
