Disaster looming in education cuts
- Published: 25 November 2008
Source : Irish Independent
With regard to the cutbacks in the education budget announced on October 14, attention has mainly been focused on the increase in the pupil-teacher ratio, which will have a seriously negative effect on education provision, particularly for the most vulnerable students.
However, the changes to the supervision and substitution scheme, which come into effect from January, will have immediate and catastrophic consequences for schools and will also have the most negative impact on those weaker students for whom extra-curricular activities are probably the main reason they continue in school.
Do parents realise, I wonder, that it is almost certain that school sporting, cultural and co-curricular events will be suspended from January 7 next, on health and safety grounds, as boards of management will not be able to guarantee safe supervision of school groups?
In practical terms this will mean that the group scheduled to attend the Young Scientist Exhibition will not be allowed travel, likewise the team in the final of the hurling championship, the planned Leaving Cert biology or geography field trips, or the fifth year class scheduled to attend a live presentation of 'Hamlet'.
Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe insists that these cuts are necessary because, in his own words, "the economy is banjaxed".
Nobody denies that the economy is in dire straits, or that very severe corrective measures are called for and, unfortunately, education cannot escape the knife.
The problem with these cuts is that they are being made with a blunt hatchet.
Had the minister or his officials consulted with the education partners, they would have been made aware of other areas where economies could have been made which would have yielded similar savings but without the disastrous consequences for children which we now face.
Jim Cooney
National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (Region 6)
Ennis
Clare
