Bord Snip - More cuts in primary education

Trotter

Primary education has been seriously hit in this report just issued. Its amazing. The future of the country is the ability to produce graduates who can drag us up to productivity in 10 years time.. yet this recommends another increase in class sizes and stuff cuts. Amazing, disgusting, and demoralising for me as someone who spends their days trying to give these children a good start.

So stop diagnosing learning difficulties = They don't exist and don't need to be dealt with

A.2 Suspend additional recruitment to the National Education Psychological Service (NEPS)
The National Education Psychological Service (NEPS) is an office of D/E&S which offers the
services of psychologists to schools. The NEPS psychologists work with primary and post-primary
schools in the areas of learning, behaviour, social and emotional development. They help identify
educational needs and offer services to meet these needs. The Group considers that the planned
recruitment of additional psychologists to provide a D/E&S psychological service to all schools
should be slowed down considerably in light of the budget circumstances that currently pertain.

Class sizes increased so these children fall further behind..

Teacher allocations, however, are not made on the basis of the pupil teacher ratio or average class
size, but on the basis of a Staffing Schedule (the number of pupils required to qualify for an
additional teacher). This staffing schedule is currently 27 to 1, i.e. one teacher for every 27
students. This is set to increase to 28 to 1 from September 2009, arising from decisions taken in the
context of the 2009 Estimates, (which will have the effect of increasing the PTR from 16.1:1 to
16.5:1). However, the Group considers that the staffing schedule should be further increased by one
point to 29, which was the level that applied prior to September 2006, yielding a saving of up to
€10m in the year the change is introduced and an annual saving of up to €30m.

Close your local school to make sure your community loses out yet again..

B.2 Amalgamation of smaller primary schools
There are 3,200 primary schools in the State. Many of these schools (47%) are small with five
teachers or fewer often located in rural areas. Given the size of the country and the total number of
primary school pupils (500,000 at end 2008) the Group believes that there is scope to reduce the
overall number of schools.

Cut the number of Special Needs Assistants while we're at it..

B.4 Reduction in the number of Special Needs Assistants
There are currently about 10,500 Special Needs Assistants (SNA’s) working in primary and post
primary schools around the country, compared with less than 6,000 in 2004/05. Expenditure in this
area has grown from about €130m in 2004 to €350m in 2009. The main duties of the assistants are
to provide necessary non–teaching services to pupils with assessed educational needs. Some SNA’s
are required for a specified period of time but in some cases schools have retained SNA’s even after
the requirement no longer exists due for example to progression of children. It should also be
possible to achieve efficiencies through greater sharing of resources and more effective time
management. The Group considers there is scope to reduce the number of SNA’s by up to 2,000
(20%) which should generate savings of up to €60m a year and still leave about 8,500 SNA’s in the
system to provide support for students with special needs; this would still be higher than the
numbers in place in 2006.

Reduce the already measley capitation grant..

B.6 Decrease in the main capitation grant
The capitation grants provided to primary schools fund the costs of running the schools. The
capitation rate has been increased by 10% each year on average over the last four years (53% in
total). This compares to annual increases in inflation over the last four years of 3.9% on average.
Schools should also be incurring lower running costs due to recent price reductions in heating and
lighting costs. For these reasons, the Group considers that the capitation should be reduced by 10%
in 2010 followed by a similar reduction in 2011. These reductions would bring capitation back to
2007 levels, saving the Exchequer approximately €25m on an annual basis.

Looks like we are 100% living in an economy, and the idea of a healthy worthwhile society is gone.


http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0716/Volume%201.pdf
http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0716/Volume%202%20FINAL.pdf

Land Of Idiots

Just saw this: http://forum.educationposts.ie/viewtopic.php?id=26563.

Some interesting suggestions. Perhaps the government should take these under advisement, seeing as they are trying to save money regardless of the future effect it will have.

byhookorbycrook

I think people still don't realise how hard hitting this is going to be.

corcaighcailin9

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

I think people still don't realise how hard hitting this is going to be.

Spot on and when the realities finally dawn on people, it will be too late to reverse the changes. I think John Carr described it best when he likened these proposals to attempting to take flesh from a skeleton.

I read somewhere that Colm McCarthy said in an RTE interview that the increased PTR had nothing to do with class sizes, did anyone catch that? I've no doubt he's a great economist but clearly he knows nothing about education.

Baby75

corcaighcailin9 wrote: »

Spot on and when the realities finally dawn on people, it will be too late to reverse the changes. I think John Carr described it best when he likened these proposals to attempting to take flesh from a skeleton.

I read somewhere that Colm McCarthy said in an RTE interview that the increased PTR had nothing to do with class sizes, did anyone catch that? I've no doubt he's a great economist but clearly he knows nothing about education.

I think a good economist looks at the situation and how it will effect society board snip nua is looking at saving as much as they can regardless of the effects it will have on people.

Invest in a child Invest in a nation !!!

what these cuts doing, now we know they are not set in stone yet, but we have also heard Brian Cowen saying he will look at them all and no area will be left untouched. :eek:

I'm just shocked...

Fairdues

I agree with byhookorbycrook. These cuts are going to be devastating. Parents shouldn't be taking this out on the schools as they are the ones who are going to have to be working miracles with reduced resources, staffing wetc etc. It's supporting our schools we should be and shouting out from the rooftops that any further cuts in primary education just cannot be tolerated. The etrm 'ivory towers' springs to mind when I think of the people who are proposing these cuts.

Orion

With the protests over raising the average class size from 27 to 28 I seriously doubt they'll up it to 29 this year. They also won't decrease the capitation grant - not officially. Late last year they merged the capitation and ancillary grants and that will take effect this September - so what they'll probably do it reduce the overall rate between the two and try to fudge it and hope nobody notices. I'm BoM Treasurer of a primary school and I'll be watching for the circular.