Nano Nagle - remains an influential educator [independent.ie]
- Published: 29 April 2009
Source: independent.ie
Wednesday April 29 2009
She was once voted Ireland's greatest ever woman in an RTé poll. A case could be made for Nano Nagle as the most influential person in education of the past three centuries.
This month, members of the Presentation Order have been marking the 225th anniversary of her death.
The 18th-century nun from a rich Cork family set up the Presentation sisters.
She established her first school in a mud cabin in Cove Lane, Cork, in 1752 in defiance of the authorities.
Nano Nagle inspired Edmund Ignatius Rice, the founder of the Christian Brothers, to bring education to the poor.
Having opened her first classroom in the slums of Cork city, Nagle built a network of schools that became the template for Catholic education in the country.
The Presentation order that she founded has since spread to the United States, Canada and two-dozen other countries worldwide.
Although the direct influence of Nano Nagle's order has diminished in recent years, there are still 36,000 pupils at Presentation schools in Ireland, mostly at primary level.
Born Honora Nagle, the eldest of seven children, she was an unlikely champion of the downtrodden.
She had every opportunity to live a gilded life among her class of wealthy landowners and merchants.
In the eighteenth century the education of Catholics was severely restricted under the penal laws.
Nagle is believed to have attended a hedge school close to her home at Ballygriffin before she was sent to France for the rest of her education.
According to an account of her life on a website devoted to her, nanonagle.com, she had a hectic social life in Paris -- "balls, parties and theatre outings, all the glamour of the life of a wealthy young lady''.
According to one account, it was after one of these parties that she was taken aback by the contrast between her wealthy, privileged life and that of the Paris poor.
She noticed a group of wretched-looking people, huddled in a church doorway.
After a stint in a convent in France, she returned to Cork to begin her work among the poor.
Nano rented a thatched mud cabin in Cove Lane as a schoolhouse. She gathered 30 poor girls from the neighbourhood as pupils.
Her brother was concerned that she was at risk of imprisonment under the penal laws.
Rising at four each morning, the saintly figure is said to have educated the children during the day, at considerable personal risk, and visited and nursed the sick by night.
As a result, she became known in Cork as the "Lady with the Lantern''. The lantern became the symbol of the Sisters of the Presentation worldwide.
Her educational mission flourished. Within a couple of years, 400 girls had enrolled in her schools in Cork. By 1769 she had five schools for girls and two for boys.
Not everybody in Cork welcomed these schools with open arms. She was insulted in the street on occasion, and her pupils were dismissed as "beggars' brats''.
"Her approach was considered radical and subversive at the time,'' says Noel Keating of Presentation Order's Education office.
When Nagle eventually set up her own congregation she called it the Society of the Charitable Instruction of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The title was later changed to Sisters of the Presentation of the Ever Blessed Virgin Mary.
Historians have noted that when Edmund Rice began his educational work he followed the "rules of the Presentation Ladies, adapted to suit the requirements of men''.
When the Presentation Order was at its peak of influence in the 1940s, there were over 5000 sisters around the world, mostly involved in education. Now the Order is finding it almost impossible to recruit nuns in Ireland.
Although the number of sisters has undergone a rapid decline over the past three decades, the order still has a strong indirect presence in education. In Ireland there are 70 Presentation primary schools (17,000 students) and 35 secondary schools (19,000 students).
At second level, the schools are now under the trusteeship of CEIST, a body set up jointly with four other Catholic congregations.
Having relinquished much of its direct control of schools, the order is again focusing on tackling injustice and poverty in society.
"The values of Nano Nagle are very much alive,'' says Noel Keating of the order's Education Office.
"Nowadays it is very much concerned with a number of issues such as climate change and poverty.''
Among the Presentation Order's initiatives are Clann Credo, a social investment fund that finances community projects, and Notschool.net, which helps young people who are not attending school.
We still need to invest in 'children of the recession' [independent.ie]
- Published: 29 April 2009
Source: independent.ie
Wednesday April 29 2009
The extent of the shortfall in resources for secondary schools as a result of Budget 2009 is frightening: medium-sized schools will typically find themselves losing at least two mainstream teachers in addition to teaching hours for language support.
This will lead undoubtedly to an increase in class sizes, a restriction in subject options and a suspension of programmes such as Transition Year, Leaving Cert Applied and Leaving Cert Vocational.
The abolition of grants for the aforementioned programmes, the loss of subject grants, grants for traveller education and the restriction of the book-grant scheme to the minority of disadvantaged schools in DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) will lead to many young people opting out of school early.
It is difficult to understand how our Government could possibly come up with the idea of abolishing the book-grant scheme which, for the past 40 years, has provided all young people with the opportunity to attend school on equal terms.
Is the Government telling us that there are no pupils in three-quarters of our post-primary schools who require support for the purchase of school books, when JMB research indicates that typically 25pc of pupils in non-DEIS schools are recipients of some level of support towards the cost of school books? What is to happen to these pupils next September?
The severe restriction of substitution cover for teachers taking pupils on out of school activities threatens the future of such activities. All of us can recount memorable trips to museums or being fortunate to represent our school in a hurling or hockey final. Are these broader but nonetheless critical experiences to be a thing of the past for this generation?
We need go no further than the recent history of our own country to acknowledge the value of investment in education. Are we now to ignore that valuable lesson?
Our concerns at the decline in funding for education are further increased when one recognises that by international standards our investment in education during the boom times was exceptionally low -- so low that we languish in the bottom three OECD countries. For voluntary secondary schools those years were more challenging and demanding rather than a time of plenty.
It is generally acknowledged that the State contributes on average €90 per pupil per annum less to schools in the voluntary secondary sector than the other two sectors. The fact that voluntary secondary schools have long been noted for the high quality of the educational experience encountered by students is a result of the very effective partnership between parents, pupils, teachers and management that operates in the 400 school communities throughout the country. This partnership has resulted in over 30pc on average of annual expenditure in voluntary secondary schools being raised in the local community.
The young people of today must not be forced to offer the excuse that they are "children of the recession". We owe it to them to invest in their future by investing in education.
Registration Renewal Reminder - [Teaching Council]
- Published: 29 April 2009
Over the coming weeks, the Council will facilitate retrospective renewal of registration, i.e. renewal of registration with effect from 28 March 2009. Teachers availing of this should note that the payroll bodies (Department of Education and Science and VECs) have notified the Council that the option to pay the fee by means of deduction from salary is no longer available for the current registration year. Teachers should therefore select another payment option when completing the registration renewal form. The most cost-effective option is on-line payment.
When Section 30 of the Teaching Council Act, 2001 is commenced by the Minister for Education and Science in the coming months, registration will be mandatory for all teachers wishing to teach in recognised schools and have their salaries paid from State monies. Registered teachers who allow their registration to lapse and who subsequently wish to re-register with the Teaching Council will be required to undergo the full application process including submission of transcripts and a process of Garda vetting.
Protestant schools 'victimised' [independent.ie]
- Published: 25 April 2009
Source: independent.ie
By John Cooney
Saturday April 25 2009
The Anglican Archbishop of Dublin has renewed his attack on the Government, claiming that the Budget's education cutbacks have endangered the survival of Protestant schools in the Republic.
Archbishop John Neill said last night that it was very sad that at a time of growth in Church of Ireland numbers, "there should be a blindness to the needs of Protestant schools, a need which was fully recognised by all previous administrations". He described the cuts as "very discriminatory". He was speaking at the book launch in Kilkenny Castle of 'Where Swift and Berkeley Learnt', a history of Kilkenny College.
The archbishop regretted that in spite of every effort by Protestant schools and by Church of Ireland bench of bishops, there was "an unbelievable lack of understanding in the Department of Education and Science of the fact that previous Governments have recognised the specific needs of providing education within their own ethos for a vibrant but scattered Protestant population".
- John Cooney
School fees 'could soar to €30,000' if subsidy withdrawn [independent.ie]
- Published: 24 April 2009
Source: independent.ie
By John Walshe
FEE-paying schools would have to charge up to €30,000 per student annually if the Government withdrew the yearly €100m taxpayer' subsidy, it was claimed yesterday.
Most of the subsidy is given in the form of teachers' salaries but the Oireachtas committee on education was told that it was simplistic to suggest there would be savings if it were removed.
The Joint Managerial Body (JMB), which represents 400 fee-paying and free education schools, strongly defended the part played by the 56 fee-charging schools -- 35 Catholic, and 21 minority religious -- which between them cater for 26,000 students.
Sr Eileen Randles said the average fee for the four Loreto fee-charging schools was €3,600 a year. If teachers' salaries were not paid for by the State, the fees would rise to between €20,000 and €30,000.
The only other option was to seek to enter the Free Education Scheme, where the teachers' salaries would continue to be paid. Ferdia Kelly, JMB general secretary, said capitation grants of €15m would also have to be paid, as would building and other grants. He argued that fee-paying schools amounted to a substantial saving to the State on its obligation to provide free post primary education.
Representatives strongly rejected Senator Fidelma Healy Eames' claim that "the word on the street is that in fee-paying schools the address and occupation of the parent is what's most important".
Gerry Foley, headmaster of Belvedere College in Dublin city centre, replied: "I can categorically state that that is not the case". Ten percent of Belvedere pupils were classified as Special Educational Needs and this did not include those with physical disabilities, while 10pc were also in receipt of bursaries because they could not afford the fees.
He said that the school was oversubscribed every year but it did not discriminate in favour of bright pupils.
Charges
"There would be as many high-fliers out there not getting a place as there would be kids with special needs not getting a place," he said.
Christopher Woods, principal of Wesley College, also strongly rejected charges that Wesley -- based in Ballinteer, Dublin -- was not taking its fair share of pupils with special needs.
Its intake was comparable with a school in the free education scheme in the area, said Mr Woods, who also strongly criticised the effects of cuts in the budget, which particularly hit minority schools.
Ian Coombes from Bandon Grammar School in Co Cork said his school, like other fee-charging schools, would lose about 10pc of its teachers as well as other staff.
- John Walshe
