IPPN

EDUCATION Minister Batt O'Keeffe has been warned that furious parents and teachers will not back down in opposing controversial cutbacks that will dramatically increase class sizes and stall new school developments.

The warning came as an estimated 10,000 people protested in Cork city centre over the weekend in the escalating row over proposed education cutbacks.

The protest march was the latest in a series of demonstrations organised by the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) to highlight the implications for the primary school sector of the budgetary cutbacks proposed by Minister O'Keeffe.

Plight

Minister O'Keeffe warned that the budgetary changes are simply unavoidable given Ireland's economic plight and the financial situation facing the Government.

However, the INTO warned that it is morally wrong to make parents and children pay for Ireland's economic woes -- arguing that the Celtic Tiger was created in the first instance by Ireland's strategic investment in education.

One parent, Mary O'Sullivan, supported the protest march on Saturday afternoon having driven all the way from Barraduff in Kerry.

"Where we are in Barraduff the class size is just right and you can see it. There is a nice tidy number and what he (her five-year-old son, Joshua) has learned in a couple of months in school is unbelievable," she said.

"Once one thing goes it is going to have a knock-on effect on everything because teachers that now give time to something outside their remit won't be able to even do what they are supposed to be doing.

"There is no point in waiting for everyone else to fight for this. Some people always wait for everyone else to fight the battle. Then they complain when the battle is lost."

One Cork teacher warned that the education sector simply cannot sustain the proposed cutbacks. "I came today because I am a teacher at Cloghroe National School and our school is going to be impacted," warned teacher Eileen Keady.

"We are okay for this year, but next year an appointment won't be made that should be made because the right number of children are there to make it. So we are very upset that any changes are being made and that the Government has gone back on its promise to lower class size," she said.

"I regard it as a slap in the face. We were going to have a teacher appointed to teach the foreign language children and now it won't go ahead.

"If you can't understand what is being said how can you learn?"

Teachers and parents have vowed to continue to mount similar protests until the Government reverses its cutback policies.

- Ralph Riegel