IPPN

Published: 20 November 2008

Source : Irish Examiner

Children to bear brunt of teaching staff cuts

By Niall Murray, Education Correspondent
LIKE dozens of other schools, Scoil Náisiúnta an Chroí Naofa will have fewer language support staff to help an increased number of pupils in need of their help next year.

There are 48 pupils from 14 different countries at the school in the parish of Glounthaune, a few miles outside Cork city.

The school has three full-time language support teachers, having been allocated an extra post in September when the numbers whose first language is not English passed the 42 threshold for which a third appointment is needed. However, under the budget cuts, that will automatically be reduced to two language support staff, even though the number of international children will probably be more than 50 next autumn. Most of the children go out of class in small groups of up to five or six for half an hour a couple of times a week, depending on their level of English, but that will change next year.

"The Department of Education is expecting us to provide the same level of support or even more with two teachers than they felt it was necessary to provide three teachers for this year. The bottom line for us will be to put children in bigger groups or give them less time with the language support teacher," said Aiden O'Brien, principal of the 422-pupil school.

He said another impact will be disruption to mainstream classes, because teachers are conscious of the need to give a little more time to pupils with lower levels of English.

"And because of the increase in the class sizes, we will have at least three classes in our school which will be bigger than last year. We currently have four classes with at least 32 pupils in each," he said.

Parents from the school will be among thousands expected to take part in a protest against education cutbacks in Cork on Saturday morning.

The Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) Cork city north branch estimates that 19 jobs will be lost in around one-third of the 53 schools in its area, because of changes in class sizes and the language support cuts.

"A large proportion of these are English language teachers whose loss will leave schools struggling to cope with newcomer children with little or no English. Even ordinary classes will be affected by the impact of this cut, as teachers try to cope with these children without support," said branch spokesperson Patricia Murphy. "The loss of classroom teachers will inevitably lead to much larger classes in those schools, leaving children struggling to cope."