Give us back our teachers

national | miscellaneous | news report

Saturday December 03, 2005 12:27

by Gregor Kerr - INTO Dublin City North branch - personal capacity

kerrgregor at yahoo dot co dot uk

086-1501151

Public meeting demands reversal of staffing cuts

Almost 300 people attended a packed public meeting in the Teachers Club, Parnell Square, Dublin on Wednesday night 30th November to protest at the loss of Special Needs teachers in a number of primary schools in the North inner city.

Almost 300 people attended a packed public meeting in the Teachers Club, Parnell Square, Dublin on Wednesday night 30th November to protest at the loss of Special Needs teachers in a number of primary schools in the North inner city.

The way in which schools are given teachers to teach children with special needs changed last June. Instead of such teachers being allocated as a result of psychological assessments of individual pupils, the Department of Education and Science has moved to what they term a General Allocation system. Under the new scheme, Special Needs teachers are allocated to schools in proportion to the number of pupils on roll. In the vast majority of schools this new scheme has resulted in either no change or an improvement in the support which can be offered to pupils with special needs.

However in a number of schools – mainly based in the north inner city – the change has meant that the school cannot give the same level of support to children who need it as they could a few months ago. The promise given by the Minister for Education & Science, Mary Hanafin, in October 2004 that “no child will lose a support they currently have” has not been honoured in these schools.

Wednesday night’s meeting was organised by the disadvantaged sub-committee of District XIV of the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) and was addressed by Brendan O’Sullivan of the INTO’s Central Executive Committee and by two principals from schools affected, Pat Courtney and Mark Candon. Contributions from the floor came from parents and teachers angry at the fact that in the era of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ pupils who need help in school are being denied that help. Speaker after speaker demanded that the staffing levels in our schools be restored to its previous level and that the pupils be given the same chance as everyone else.

A motion was proposed at the meeting that a face-to-face meeting be sought with local TD, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, to demand his intervention. It was also agreed that if he did not meet us or did not intervene to ensure that these staffing cutbacks are reversed, parents and teachers would protest outside the Dáil and outside Mr. Ahern’s constituency office.

Standing together in the interest of our children, parents and teachers of the north inner city will ensure that the government is forced to meet our demands.

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Comments (1 of 1)

Support from the South West

by Miriam Cotton

Sat Dec 03, 2005 12:58

023 36815

This protest is most welcome by parents in this locality too. Many people have lost SNA allocation and, bizarrely, even in schools where the situation has supposedly improved overall, some children have lost out . It makes no sense. The key to understanding the changes though is that they were introduced with the SNA in mind rather than the needs of the children. SNA conditions are said to have improved and the overall costs of hiring them reduced. That was the priority.

Another worrying development that I have heard of is that the SENO's, who are not necessarily qualified teachers and definitely not psychologists, have been assessing the need of individual children based on their personal observations. Parents have not been told that these assessments are taking place and have no opportunity to comment on the conclusions drawn.

In my son's school, allocations were decided without any parent being told what was happening. My information is that advisers went into the school before the GAM was announced and had already decided the level of support that would be allocated when it was announced end of May/early June. Youll remember that teachers apparently had just two weeks to submit their applications but in reality, it may actually have been that they had been preparing for this for some time.

There was obviously some injunction placed on principals and other teachers not to discuss what was happening with parents and none of us knew anything until Septtember when there was no possiblity of appeal.

I dont know of any child who had improved support by know of many who lost out.

One last issue is that the alleged overall increase in the numbers of SNAs (and is this actually the case?) has only been achieved by breaking up the system by which SNAs work with the chidren. Previously each child had their own dedicated SNA (FT or PT). Now, in order to improve SNA conditions, children can have up to two or three different SNAs in a week. This is hugely counterproductive from the child's point of view - particularly in the context of SEN where continuity of successful relationships is vital to the pshychological and educational interests of the child.

I despair that, with all we know about working with SEN, such an insensitive system can be introduced. Please keep us posted on Indymedia about this - any support we can offer will be willingly given, if at all possible.

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