No plans to close any small rural schools - Tánaiste [fiannafail.ie]
- Published: 17 January 2011
Regarding speculation on the future of small rural primary schools, the Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills, Mary Coughlan, made her views known on the Special Group on Public Services and Expenditure report in the Dáil on September 23rd, 2009.
Her comments related to her strong opposition to the closure of small schools and Garda stations. This position has not changed.
A Value for Money review is presently taking place relating to small primary schools in the Department of Education and Skills. This process is a normal procedure conducted by all Government Departments regarding areas of significant public expenditure.
Full Story: www.fiannafail.ie
Give me a crash course in . . . new school admission policies [IrishTimes]
- Published: 15 January 2011
My son is applying for entry to that great fee-paying school attended by his brothers and his dad. Admission is a formality, I suppose. Am I right?
Sorry to rain on your parade, but you may be a little overconfident. Schools may no longer be able to guarantee places to past pupils on legal advice.
Who is behind this scandal? Name the culprit! Please modify your tone! There are important equality issues here. Legal experts are examining a landmark Equality Tribunal case last year. This upheld the right of a Traveller to be enrolled at a school in Clonmel, Co Tipperary. The school had given priority to Catholic applicants whose fathers or brothers were past pupils.
So how does this affect my poor son? The Department of Education is examining legal advice it has received on the case. It says it is “examining current practices by schools across all management types and in both sectors (primary and second level) in relation to enrolment policies and enrolment practices’’.
What’s going on? Isn’t admission to all schools open? Not quite. Although they don’t admit it, some schools use all kinds of restrictive admissions policies to exclude certain categories of students, including Travellers, those with special needs, the children of immigrants and even low academic achievers. These are not my words; this was the main finding of a Department of Education audit of school admission policies in 2006. The audit found some schools were using elaborate pre-enrolment procedures, such as waiting lists and siblings policies, to exclude some students. Some were even “cherry-picking” the best and the brightest students, an illegal practice under the Education Act. At the time, Mary Hanafin, as minister for education, accused some schools of using “subtle practices’’ to exclude some students.
I hope you are not talking about fee-paying schools. Would you believe it? Fee-paying schools were excluded from the department’s audit. But, yes, some of the 56 fee-paying schools in the State are in the line of fire here. The Teachers’ Union of Ireland accuses some of operating a kind of education apartheid. General secretary Peter MacMenamin says they are “positively selecting those students they want and at the same time refusing to accept any student with difficulties, such as would require special needs assistance. This is nothing more than a continuation of a vicious form of educational apartheid designed to maintain a class-ridden society.”
Full Story: www.irishtimes.com
Teachers to work extra hour a week in pay deal [Independent.ie]
- Published: 15 January 2011
TEACHERS will soon be working an extra hour a week as part of a major shake-up of the education system.
The ground-breaking move means that parents will no longer face school closures for events such as staff meetings. These will now be scheduled outside class time.
The extra hours, which may be grouped into blocks of up to two days, will be used for non-teaching work such as parent-teacher meetings, school planning and teacher training.
Other major changes are also on the way for schools under the Croke Park pay and productivity deal in the public service, involving greater flexibility on the part of teachers.
But there is still huge opposition to implementing the reforms among third-level lecturers in institutes of technology .
The Labour Relations Commission was called in to try to broker the deal, but lecturers are strenuously opposed to the flexibility being sought in their working arrangements.
For the first time, under this deal, teachers in secondary and community and comprehensive schools can now be transferred, if surplus to requirements.
Vocational schools already have a redeployment scheme.
More than 300 teachers who currently have no official position in their schools -- some of them for many years -- will be transferred to within a 50km radius next September. The Department of Education had previously warned that the alternative to redeployment was compulsory redundancies.
Full Story: www.independent.ie
Survey reveals Irish teenage tech trends [siliconrepublic.com]
- Published: 14 January 2011
Many of the tech trends among Irish teenagers include social networking usage, mobile preferences, online media consumption and internet purchasing habits, a survey suggests.
Cork and Dublin-based Mulley Communication conducted the survey with 100 teenagers aged between 13 and 19.
"While we may speculate on how teenagers consume and pay for media, this survey was designed by teenagers and distributed by them so I hope this is reflective of what interests them,” said Damien Mulley of Mulley Communications
"We have a country full of people, not even finished school yet, who can run rings around us when it comes to usage of digital media.
“There's lots of talk of smart economies but maybe we should get our digital natives to dictate some policies to us for a change. After all, it was digitally savvy kids who were the founders of Facebook and so many other start-ups,” said Mulley.
Communications
The survey found mobile phones are the most treasured items in teens' possession, and 74pc access the internet through their phones.
Some 44pc of teenagers are on the Meteor network. The most common phone was found to be from Nokia, however, 66pc of teenagers want an iPhone.
Fifty-six per cent of survey participants communicated with their friends through text, while 38pc chatted to them through Facebook. Email was still somewhat popular, with 27pc of teenagers corresponding with friends through this channel.
Cabinet agrees text for child amendment [IrishTimes]
- Published: 14 January 2011
THE CABINET has agreed a proposed new wording for a children’s amendment to the Constitution, which recognises the rights of all children but does not contain a provision that would allow the State be sued to have economic or social specific rights vindicated.
It follows the wording of the amendment proposed by the all-party committee on the subject to a large degree, but, arising from concerns understood to be held by the Attorney General Paul Gallagher, the commitment to the general welfare of children is expressed in aspirational terms, and will be in Article 45 of the Constitution, headed “Directive Principles of Social Policy”.
If the amendment is passed, this will state: “The State acknowledges that children, by reason of their physical and mental immaturity, need special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, and pledges itself to safeguard with special care the rights and interests of children.
“The State shall cherish all the children of the State equally.”
Like the committee’s proposed wording, the distinction between the status of the children of married and unmarried parents is removed, so that the same threshold will exist for intervention in all families.
This will entail amending Article 42 A on the family to include a reference to parents “regardless of their marital status” failing in their responsibility to the child. The State will then seek to supply the place of the parents. This replaces the existing Article 42.5, dealing with State intervention.
Full Story: www.irishtimes.com
