Education Cutbacks to Hit The Most Vulnerable
- Published: 25 January 2011
Recent education cutbacks are targeting the disadvantaged in our society most. Teachers working with Traveller children, co-ordinators for disadvantaged schools in rural areas and many of the teachers who taught English to the immigrant population are being withdrawn by the Department of Education and Skills in a cost-cutting exercise that will save nothing in the long-term.
Speaking to over 1,000 primary school Principals at the annual IPPN Principals’ Conference in Citywest, IPPN President Pat Goff said
‘The outgoing government are kicking out the props and collapsing the scaffolding that has supported disadvantaged schools and their communities in recent years. Clearly, the government has little understanding of the role schools play in counteracting disadvantage. Children have become a pawn on the political chessboard’.
An embargo on the recruitment of additional Special Needs Assistants has been implemented, regardless of how many additional children with special needs enter the system. The IPPN President stresses that this will have a negative impact on these children as well as their classmates.
‘The care needs of a child have not changed. The supports needed to include a child in a mainstream class have not changed. What has changed is the Government’s u-turn on its commitment to the most vulnerable in our society. This is going to have a huge impact, not only on the child with special needs, but also on the entire class into which that child is integrated’ continued Mr Goff.
