Minister wants extra pre-schooling for special needs children [schooldays.ie]
- Published: 07 July 2011
The Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald has said she would like children with special needs to be provided with an extra year of free pre-schooling.
Currently, all families are entitled to one free year of pre-school paid for by the state, but the minister believes special needs pupils would benefit from this being doubled.
She told the Irish Times such a plan would boost their development and allow them to be better served by educators.
"The kind of needs they have would become clearer in the course of the second year and they would be better prepared for primary school," Ms Fitzgerald said.
Full Story: www.schooldays.ie
Gaelscoil gets thumbs up after big inspection [wicklowpeople.ie]
- Published: 07 July 2011
GAELSCOIL CHILL MHANTÁIN has been given a thumbs-up by the Department of Education and Skills after an inspection of the school was carried out.
The Inspectorate is a division within the Department of Education and Science and at present has a complement of 150 primary and post-primary inspectors.
Inspectors visited the Rathnew situated school in October of 2010 when 222 pupils were enrolled. Their findings were just recently published on the Department of Education website alongside reports for other schools in the country which were also inspected.
The staff and pupils were singled out for particular praise.
Full Story: www.wicklowpeople.ie
Quin school under pressure as numbers grow [clarechampion.ie]
- Published: 07 July 2011
The Department of Education and Skills has acknowledged that Scoil na Mainistreach’s school building in Quin is “now deficient in meeting the needs of the current school population” and is likely to become increasingly so in the future.
The department noted this in a in a whole school evaluation report carried out in November 2010 and which was recently published.
While the school received a positive evaluation it was noted by the inspectorate that the school’s board of management addresses the maintenance and improvement of the school building with diligence.
Notwithstanding this, the report noted that “the school building is now deficient in meeting the needs of the current school population. As it is expected that the school population will continue to grow, the current building is likely to be increasingly deficient in meeting the school’s needs into the future”.
Full Story: www.clarechampion.ie
Together we can beat the bullies [advertiser.ie]
- Published: 07 July 2011
The ISPCC website features the heartbreaking story of Holly (15). After months of suffering at the hands of bullies at school and on a social networking site she plucked up the courage to contact the Childline One to One instant messaging service and admit that she was finding it hard to cope. Holly had her hair pulled and her lunch taken. She was being threatened and called names. Worst of all she was feeling isolated, scared and lonely as her former friends no longer talked to her.
Childline assured Holly that she had a right to be safe and she had a right to tell a trusted adult about what was happening in order to get the support that she needed. She approached a sympathetic teacher and her situation is being dealt with. Unfortunately, not all children finds the help they need. In the most extreme cases young people who are suffering at the hands of bullies may believe that they have no option but to end their lives. What a terrible, tragic, waste of potential that is.
Bullying remains a serious concern for all Irish teenagers. The UNICEF Ireland Changing the Future: Experiencing Youth in Contemporary Ireland report published in April this year found that a shameful 55 per cent of teenagers were bullied and although “cyberbullying” is quite common (20 per cent), traditional forms of bullying are still most prevalent. Almost all were bullied with words, a shocking 24 per cent of those who were physically bullied were beaten up, 33 per cent were attacked, 55 per cent had things thrown at them and 59 per cent had things stolen.
Full Story: www.advertiser.ie
More children eating school dinners [belfasttelegraph.co.uk]
- Published: 07 July 2011
More than two-fifths of primary school children and a third of secondary school pupils are opting for school meals.
Figures show an average of 44.1% of children in primary schools and 37.6% of pupils in secondary school ate school meals in 2010/11, a rise from 41.4% and 35.8%, respectively, in the previous year.
More than three million children in England are now eating meals at school, said a spokeswoman.
The figures, compiled from information provided by 129 local authorities in England, showed that 173,000 more pupils were taking school lunch compared to the previous year.
Full Story: www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
