Parents, teachers join forces to fight recent school cuts

Parents, teachers and boards of management across the county are to undertake a major campaign against recent education cuts. Over 200 people attended a meeting at Ratoath Senior National School recently, where serious concern was raised at the extent of the recent cuts and the impact they were having on children. The meeting heard that class sizes in Meath are the third largest in the country and parents expressed outrage at the cuts in funding for special needs, language support, buildings needs and substitution, as well as the increase in class sizes. The campaign against the cuts will be lead by teachers, parents and boards of management, and public representatives will be lobbied to fulfill the Government's pre-election promises on education. Ratoath Senior National School principal, Maurice Kearney, said children should not be paying the price of Government cutbacks, which, he said, would see a narrowing of curricular experiences for children and a severe reduction in extracurricular activities. He pointed out that Ireland now has the largest class sizes in OECD countries, which is having a major impact on education. Mr Kearney pointed said roughly six to 10 per cent of the school population does not use English as their first language and this was an area severely affected by cuts. His school has two temporary teachers for children with language needs but was this was reduced to a limited number of part-time hours, despite there being the same number of students with language needs in the school. He outlined the cuts in special needs education and the fact that 1,200 special needs posts are threatened this year and all equipment and resource grants abolished for resource teachers. The meeting heard schools were losing €4.3m from Traveller capitation grants, €2.1m from school library grants and the schoolbook grants were gone. Mr Kearney spoke about the widespread waste of money on pefabs around the country and pointed out that the prefabs at Ratoath Junior National School cost €125,000 each year and, by the time these prefabs are removed this summer, over €1m will have been spent on them. Mr Kearney pointed out that a recent survey clearly demonstrated that all categories of primary teachers devoted a considerable amount of their own time to school-related activities outside of school hours. The average teacher spent 317 hours, or 56 additional teaching days, on school-related activities outside of school hours. In addition, the average principal spent 421 hours, or 74 additional teaching days, on school-related activities outside of school time. He told the meeting that no teacher wants a school closure, yet this seems to be on the horizon and he outlined the pay cuts teachers had experienced since 2008 and he asked parents, boards of management and teachers to work together. He outlined how the talks which took place between the teacher unions and the Government broke down in December. "Lengthy negotiations continued over three days in December. No impasse occurred. No breakpoint was reached. Hopes were high that a deal would be made, that there would be no more disruption and no more strike action," he remarked. He said that the union negotiators were suddenly called in and told that the Government no longer felt there was a basis for concluding a deal and the public sector unions reacted with work-to-rule and various directives. The directives ban the participation of INTO members in parent/teacher meetings outside of school hours, attending in-service training during school hours without substitute cover, staff meetings outside of school time or undertaking additional duties where a post of responsibility is not filled as result of the promotion embargo. In addition, the union is recommending that each school review its practice of voluntary activities after school time and consider if such activities might take place during school time. Mr Kearney said that, since 2008, a teacher on €50,000 has seen their pay cut by 16.5 per cent through increased levies and taxes.