24th January 2007 - Background information - IPPN Keynote speeches at IPPN Principals' Conference
1. IPPN welcomes the investment in school leadership that the Department of Education has made in recent years. This is beginning to make a difference in improving and professionalising the quality of leadership in schools.
2. The theme is Changing Ireland - the context of change in schools and for children has been more significant in the past 10 years than in the previous 50 years.
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: Actions that need to be taken if we are to achieve real improvement in primary education for the benefit of all children.
3. Principalship has lapsed into a state of disempowerment rather than empowerment.
Examples:
â€Â¢ Overloaded role of the Principal
â€Â¢ School Attendance - NEWB
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:
The LEGISLATIVE overload needs to be supported with appropriate structure.
â€Â¢ Principals need continuous professional development opportunities
â€Â¢ School attendance (NEWB) needs an immediate review - the Welfare Board does not appear to have the structures to respond to pupils over 20 days absent
4. Ireland has gained an international reputation for having a high standard of teaching and learning.
â€Â¢ Teachers and Principals are highly professional and committed to their work.
â€Â¢ Teachers and Principals are engaged in designing anddelivering Professional Development programmes.
â€Â¢ Children are ambitious and eager to learn.
â€Â¢ Parents support their children's education and have opportunities to work closely with teachers
5. Funding. The rising cost of running a primary school continues to outstrip the rate of increase in grant aid.
â€Â¢ Research shows that schools are funded to the tune of approximately half of the actual running costs.
â€Â¢ Twice the funding is made available to Secondary schools and to Primary schools for basic running costs - light, heat etc
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:
â€Â¢ Funding the running costs of primary schools children must be brought into line with that of second-level schools
â€Â¢ Funding must be based on the number of children enrolled in the current school year and issued on a monthly basis.
â€Â¢ Secretaries and caretakers must be paid by the Dept. with secretaries positioned on a par with the terms and conditions of SNAs
6. There has been a progressive overloading of the Role of the School leading to expectations that are unreasonable and unsustainableThe time has come to re-examine the central purpose of the school...
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: If the school is going to become the point where more than educational services are delivered, then
â€Â¢ The design, planning and resourcing of schools must include facilities and professionals for the relevant disciplines.
â€Â¢ The provision of comprehensive services to children is essential but not at the risk of compromising thecore function of the school
7. The Revised Curriculum is undoubtedly something we are all proud of. The myriad additional agencies and support services that now interact with schools collectively consume so much time and energy from Principals and teachers.
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: IPPN calls for a restructuring of the main support programmes - School Dev. Planning, Curriculum Support & Special Education Support - into one, locally-based professional support service offering a more coherent, and less intrusive interaction with schools
8. Affirmative action must be taken to address the unequal distribution of New Irish children in schools. Factors such as language groups, access to rental accommodation, transport and jobs tend to create concentrated enrolments of new Irish in certain schools
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: Three actions are required:
â€Â¢ We need a comprehensive audit of all school enrolments from the New Irish community. This will enable strategic planning to be based on facts rather than estimation.
â€Â¢ The Department should engage its Regional Offices in the coordination of enrolment applications from the New Irish community. While this may require an amendment to the Education Act, it is necessary if we are to address this fundamental issue. Itwill not resolve itself.
â€Â¢ "Joined-up" thinking and sharing of resources with Co. Councils, Health Boards, schools and other agencies.
9. There is a huge difference between the ICT haves and the ICT have-nots depending on a school's fundraising capacity. This means that children's access to technology is unequal.
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: We need to develop a strategy which enables the delivery of the curriculum for all children through appropriate technologies. This strategy must fully integrate pedagogy, training, software, hardware and tech. support, with multi-annual funding for ongoing reinvestment.
10. It is a nonsense that there appears to be an absence of the technological know-how to know-who is in our child population at present.
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: It is both urgent and important that the Department commences work on a National Pupil Database. This must facilitate a comprehensive system of capturing information from schools electronically and the sharing of this information where relevant to other authorised agencies.
11. Teaching Principals lead 7of every 10 schools. They account for almost half of all primary children. We know from research that the quality of education in smaller schools is excellent. We also know that such schools are crucial to their communities particularly given the disappearance of most other services in rural Ireland. Why then are virtually all Department policies & programmes designed for larger schools and single-grade teaching?
What IS the Department's policy for small schools? Does it have one? If not, why not?
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: Three things must happen:
â€Â¢ Small schools must be facilitated to participate in appropriate clusters to enable them access the facilities of full-time secretarial, caretaking and other shareable resources - creating a critical mass, acquiring the benefits of larger schools.
â€Â¢ Teaching Principals must not be prevented from filling the role of support teacher.
â€Â¢ Systematic and sustainable support must be given to teaching principals
â€Â¢ To achieve this, IPPN is calling for a radical change to the current redeployment panel.
24th January 2007 - Webcast of IPPN's Annual Conference
All 3 days of this year's IPPN Annual Conference will be broadcast live.
Simply click this link rtsp://66.28.252.96/encoder/webcast.rm during these times [Thurs 7-9, Fri 9-10, 2-3, Sat 10-12].
You will need RealPlayer to view the live broadcast.
Thurs: 7 - 9 p.m. Presidents Address and Emily Logan, Ombudsman for Children
Fri: 9 - 10 a.m. Minister for Education and Science, Mary Hanafin TD and Sean Cottrell, Director IPPN
2 - 3 p.m. Sorina Selaru - The perspective of a New Irish parent
Sat 10.15 a.m. David McWilliams, Primary Education... Sound Economics?
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25th January 2007 - Cattle more important than children?
Principal teachers from all over Ireland will gather over the next three days to debate and discuss, to share good practice and to learn new skills. The annual conference of the Irish Primary Principals Network (IPPN) takes place in Killarney from Thursday til Saturday.
"One of the most important issues I will address with colleagues over the course of our conference is the urgent and important need for comprehensive information to be collected on the children in our schools." Said Tomas O Slatara, President of IPPN today. "We have a situation in this country where we record every significant fact about cattle in Ireland from birth through inoculations and movement from farm to farm right through to the butcher and the table. We have been able to do this since 1997 and so can now even examine trends and movements over time. With our children, we cannot say how many newcomer children are in our schools, where they are, what their language learning needs are and what trends are happening. Similarly, we do not have any clear picture of children with special education needs, traveller children or any other data to analyse which could inform policy and resource allocation. The calf is more important than the child, it seems."
Mr. O Slatara will make a strong call for immediate steps to be taken to introduce a National Primary Pupil Database. "This has been talked about for long enough," said O Slatara, "it is time now for action."
The theme of this year's conference is "Changing Ireland" and among the issues to be covered in workshops and general sessions are:
Æ'Þ The state of Information Technology in our schools; both on the teaching and learning side and on the administrative side. Æ'Þ The impact of large numbers of "newcomer" children in to the system; the biggest demographic change since the famine; the need for a language policy to cater for a rapidly changing educational landscape. Æ'Þ The costs of running and operating schools; the reality of fundraising as an essential component of basic operating costs and how this translates to a "stealth" tax. Æ'Þ The emerging need for counselling services for children
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25th January 2007 - Helping the local school may be another stealth tax
Helping the local school may be another stealth tax.
How?
When you donate €100 to your local school by helping the sponsored walk, you may, inadvertently, be paying another stealth tax. How?
Well this money you give has already been taxed, so you will have already given at least €25 to the exchequer in order to have the €100 to give to the school.
Then, when the school spends this €100, €21 of it goes back to the exchequer in the form of VAT on whatever the school has purchased with it.
So, for every €100 the school raises through fundraising, the exchequer gets anything from €46 to €91 - depending on your marginal rate of tax.
IPPN estimates that primary schools pay for up to 50% of their normal running costs by fundraising. This was one of the findings of their recent survey of Principals on school funding.
There are 450,000 children in our schools, Approx €100 per child has to be found each year to keep schools running. This is €45M every year which you, as parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and neighbours, give to our schools when you support the Cake Sale, the Sponsored Walk or the Christmas Fair.
Let's say that this comes from earnings which have paid tax at the lower rate, then this €45M has already contributed €9M to the exchequer and will go on to contribute another €9.45M in VAT when the school spends it.
So, not only does the state expect you to fork out the €45M that is needed, it also earns another €18.45M from you when you bail out your school.
This is a sneaky stealth tax which thrives on the generosity of parents and the wider community towards primary school children.
And, by the way, the next time you hear of some initiative announce by government for primary schools, just remember that while €1 million sounds like a lot, what you actually have is €2.22 per child. And for every million the state gives to schools, €210,000 goes straight back to the exchequer in VAT.
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