800 Teachers for 9000 Students

Sponge Bob

800 Teachers were employed ( additionally) to deal with 9000 Travellers in the Education system. This was in addition to normal staff ratios in those schools and identified remedial and special needs resources on top.

I added all the numbers between 5 and 19 http://beyond2020.cso.ie/Census/TableViewer/tableView.aspx?ReportId=75490 and assumed full attendance to get the figure of 9000 , it may actually have been 800 teachers for 8000 students.

These are the bulk of the teachers to be redeployed in September 2011

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0321/travellers_education.html

This special allocation cost us €40m a year. What reviews were undertaken of this supplementary expenditure and what were the outcomes of the reviews ??

Withdrawing a program like this for no stated reason is not good practice.

SBWife

I'd say the number of traveler children in the system is closer to 6,000 - compulsory education is only from the age of 6 to 15 or until three years of secondary have been completed.

Sleepy

Assuming children from the Travelling community don't all have special needs, why is there a need for them to be treated differently than any other student?

kippy

Sleepy wrote: »

Assuming children from the Travelling community don't all have special needs, why is there a need for them to be treated differently than any other student?

Generally, the level of literacy at home is a hell of a lot lower than the "other students".
Its hard enough teaching kids who can go home to their parents to get help with their homework but it's far more difficult to teach or improve kids whose parents cant help with the homework.

Godge

I think there is a simple reason for this cutback.

€40m a year for 10 years is €400m and no sign of any improvement in traveller participation rates at later second level or third level. Money was spent to achieve a particular policy aim - improve the educational attainments of travellers. It did not achieve the policy aim so the money should be diverted elsewhere and another approach tried.

We are the worst in the world at stopping policy initiatives that are not working because vested interests always get involved in protecting their patch. In this case, watch the crying and wailing from the VECs and from the teacher unions.

kippy

Godge wrote: »

I think there is a simple reason for this cutback.

€40m a year for 10 years is €400m and no sign of any improvement in traveller participation rates at later second level or third level. Money was spent to achieve a particular policy aim - improve the educational attainments of travellers. It did not achieve the policy aim so the money should be diverted elsewhere and another approach tried.

We are the worst in the world at stopping policy initiatives that are not working because vested interests always get involved in protecting their patch. In this case, watch the crying and wailing from the VECs and from the teacher unions.

If it has been a ten year thing (which I don't think it has to be honest) there's no way of telling whether the pupils who would have had the most benefit from the extra teaching (the four year olds ten years ago) would participate in the later years of secondary school/third level.
While I realise the cuts are at primary and post primary level I think the majority are at the primary level.

Sleepy

kippy wrote: »

Generally, the level of literacy at home is a hell of a lot lower than the "other students".
Its hard enough teaching kids who can go home to their parents to get help with their homework but it's far more difficult to teach or improve kids whose parents cant help with the homework.

I still don't see why that has to be carried out as an initiative for Traveller children.

Children from any background can have literacy issues or lack of parental support at home: how many kids in Dublin 4 have two parents who are too busy with work to be able to help them with their homework at night?

I'd be against any policy that further segregates children than necessary. Should an extra literacy support class end up having 9 traveller children and 2 children from the settled community so be it but throwing money at the children of a group that elect to consider themselves as being outside of normal society just because they're from that community is not on imho.

Equality means equality of access to resources in school. No child should gain or miss out on the opportunity to receive extra assistance because of their background.

SBWife

Sleepy wrote: »

Equality means equality of access to resources in school. No child should gain or miss out on the opportunity to receive extra assistance because of their background.

Therefore specific support for traveler children should not be a policy if it in any way implies that a child from a settled background doesn't have the same opportunity to receive needed extra assistance.

Godge

kippy wrote: »

If it has been a ten year thing (which I don't think it has to be honest) there's no way of telling whether the pupils who would have had the most benefit from the extra teaching (the four year olds ten years ago) would participate in the later years of secondary school/third level.
While I realise the cuts are at primary and post primary level I think the majority are at the primary level.

I only said ten years because I was aware it had been around for at least that long. Imagine my surprise when I checked this link

http://www.sttc.ie/about.html

and found that senior traveller training centres (second-chance teaching) have been around since 1974 - 36 years. Again, where are the positive results of this? Has money just been wasted? It was mentioned in another post that one of the issues was the lack of education of parents in the home, well this programme has tried to address this for 36 years.

Nobody disputes that travellers are poorly educated. The Census facts speak for themselves. The problem is that lots of money has been thrown at this problem and it has yet to be solved. Time to spend the money elsewhere and think of a new solution.

kippy

Godge wrote: »

I only said ten years because I was aware it had been around for at least that long. Imagine my surprise when I checked this link

http://www.sttc.ie/about.html

and found that senior traveller training centres (second-chance teaching) have been around since 1974 - 36 years. Again, where are the positive results of this? Has money just been wasted? It was mentioned in another post that one of the issues was the lack of education of parents in the home, well this programme has tried to address this for 36 years.

Nobody disputes that travellers are poorly educated. The Census facts speak for themselves. The problem is that lots of money has been thrown at this problem and it has yet to be solved. Time to spend the money elsewhere and think of a new solution.

You're talking about two different things there.
The first thing you spoke about in the initial post was about the money provided to pay teachers in primary/secondary schools - this is a different thing altogether from what the sttc is.
I do however appreciate your point. Money is obviously being spend on two or more fronts but there doesnt seem to be any major improvements noticed.

whiteonion

Why do Travellers get special treatment in this country? Are they some sort of royalty? Cut down on ALL programs directed towards Travellers, they should get no special treatment. Everyone should be treated equally in the eyes of the law.

SBWife

Here's one of the problems as I see it:

Travellers should have equality of access,
equality of participation and equality of outcome in a
fully inclusive education system that respects Traveller
identity and culture while they are participating in the
primary education system, the post-primary system,
and the adult and further education system, where
Traveller learners will have the same chances as their
settled peers and have real-life options for progression
and employment on completion of their studies.

The text is from the Department of Educations Report and Recommendations for a Traveller Education Strategy published in 2006. The bolding is mine. Unless you can control all of the inputs you really can't control the output, and in education one of the primary inputs is the effort put in by the student. So in order to try and achieve an uncontrollable goal the department continues to throw resources at the problem despite declining effectiveness of these inputs.

Sponge Bob

Godge wrote: »

In this case, watch the crying and wailing from the VECs and from the teacher unions.

The VECs are grossly overstaffed as it is so abolishing large numbes of VEC posts ( such as the Visiting teachers who constitute some of the 800) will leave them with even larger staff surpluses.

However I think most of them are Resource Teacher for Travellers who are primary teachers allocated to certain primary schools.

The breakdown in 2005 was given as a budget of €40m comprising

was spent on mainstream primary and post-primary education to which Travellers have an equal entitlement in a manner similar to the settled population. This special resourcing for young Travellers includes the provision of a National Education Officer for Travellers, a Visiting Teacher Service consisting of 40 teachers, over 520 Resource teachers for Travellers in primary schools, the allocation of teaching hours in post-primary schools equivalent to almost 140 whole-time equivalent posts, enhanced capitation for primary and post-primary schools with Traveller pupils. ( total = 700 posts mostly in primary schools)

However it does seem short sighted to abolish all of these supports which is what is alleged in the RTE link in the first post. The Visiting Teachers have been around for 30 years.

There are pre schools and special education centres for teenagers/adults too, I don't know what the story is there.

lily09

IMO there was no justification for the amount of traveller teachers that were in the school and could have been used in a more productive way.

However the unfortunate result of this is that now travellers will be absorbed into the general allocation of Learning Support hours. As they generally score very badly in standardised testing, other children will now be pushed out of Learning Support as it is awarded on a sliding scale.

the groutch

should travellers' kids even be entitled to education?
their parents have no intention of ever working/paying taxes (bar a bit of VAT, and even that's debatable)

kippy

the groutch wrote: »

should travellers' kids even be entitled to education?
their parents have no intention of ever working/paying taxes (bar a bit of VAT, and even that's debatable)

Of course they should. Thats a ridiculous question to ask.
The idea really is to "break the cycle" - their parents werent brought up in an environment condusive to working and werent educated at all - in the main. Educate the children better and hope that the issues will get better over the next few generations.

Sponge Bob

lily09 wrote: »

other children will now be pushed out of Learning Support as it is awarded on a sliding scale.

That is exactly what will happen unless the affected schools push for more 'normal' resource teacher allocations in the meantime based on mainstream special educational needs.

However the special needs and resource assessments are conducted on a quota basis per school , eg in Galway they will only assess 3 children per school per annum....no matter what. Therefore only 3 kids can ever get support hours if their case is actually accepted and parents who know their children have special needs often start to lobby for support hours with the children still in the creche. It will be impossible to get these assessments done by the end of this school year.

Small schools get a statistically better result in that they may only have 3 children worth assessing in a year where a large school could have 6 good cases.

bamboozle

given the baby boom this country is experiencing an extra 800 teachers redeployed to other schools would be much needed or else class sizes are going to grow significantly.

thebaldsoprano

Sleepy wrote: »

why is there a need for them to be treated differently than any other student?

There's an interesting article here about Katharine Birbalsingh, an outspoken teacher in the UK who spent 10 years teaching in disadvantaged inner city schools. She argues that treating kids differently based on their parents' income, ethnicity etc isn't doing them any favours and is dumbing down the education they receive. This quote sums it up well:

Poor kids in developing countries are the best-behaved children in the world. They’re hungry for education. We’ve ruined that hunger in this country. We think the poor cannot behave themselves because they are poor. What incredible prejudice!

SBWife

kippy wrote: »

Of course they should. Thats a ridiculous question to ask.
The idea really is to "break the cycle" - their parents werent brought up in an environment condusive to working and werent educated at all - in the main. Educate the children better and hope that the issues will get better over the next few generations.

Many of the current generation of national school aged travelers' parents would have completed the first three years of secondary school. Which I'd hardly describe as being not educated at all. You don't seem to be taking into account that traveler culture encourages much earlier marriage and child bearing than that which is the norm in the rest of society. A 26 year old mother of a 6 year old would have been 16 in 2001 by which time a large majority of traveler children were completing the early years of 2nd level.

SupaNova

I don't buy the argument of not having help from parents either. I didn't have help past 4th class in primary school, done well in L.C., got through 4 years of college to gain a degree.

If you believe such things this will open your eyes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU

kippy

SupaNova wrote: »

I don't buy the argument of not having help from parents either. I didn't have help past 4th class in primary school, done well in L.C., got through 4 years of college to gain a degree.

If you believe such things this will open your eyes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU

I had little help with homework from my parents either - however they were able to help if I needed them.

SupaNova

I had little help with homework from my parents either - however they were able to help if I needed them. I had little help with homework from my parents either - however they were able to help if I needed them.

My parents were not available for help past primary school because they would not have been able to help. Parents are important to a child's education not by being able to help with homework, but by encouraging kids to learn and the importance of it. Kids love to learn and our education system kills off that love to learn.

SBWife

SupaNova wrote: »

Parents are important to a child's education not by being able to help with homework, but by encouraging kids to learn and the importance of it.

Which is why children of certain immigrant groups have historically done so well in the US.

SupaNova

Which is why children of certain immigrant groups have historically done so well in the US.

Well if the traveling community have a negative view of education, that's the root of the problem and what needs to be tackled no?

Throwing more and more teachers to give special attention to kids whose parents have a negative view of education isn't going to solve the problem.

goose2005

If we linked school attendance to child benefit payments, I'd imagine that traveller children would suddenly start coming in a lot more often.

SupaNova

If we linked school attendance to child benefit payments, I'd imagine that traveller children would suddenly start coming in a lot more often.

That could be short sighted, it would affect parents who home school. It wouldn't help the problem either to have people just show up and go through the motions when they don't want to be there or are forced to be there.

SBWife

It shouldn't affect home schoolers. Home schoolers are monitored (and are already exempt from truancy enforcement etc.) and must attain certain standards, teaching your kids lamping even if part of your culture wouldn't be part of the curriculum.

SupaNova

I knew they were monitored, but curious to know what standards they have to follow. Do they have to follow a curriculum similar to schools or just meet minimum standards in maths and english?

podge3

goose2005 wrote: »

If we linked school attendance to child benefit payments, I'd imagine that traveller children would suddenly start coming in a lot more often.

It would also cut down on the alleged multiple claiming of childrens allowance for the same child.

irishh_bob

whiteonion wrote: »

Why do Travellers get special treatment in this country? Are they some sort of royalty? Cut down on ALL programs directed towards Travellers, they should get no special treatment. Everyone should be treated equally in the eyes of the law.

tinkers provide a neverending opportunity for PC liberals and QUANGOCRATS to both pontificate and profit

irishh_bob

thebaldsoprano wrote: »

There's an interesting article here about Katharine Birbalsingh, an outspoken teacher in the UK who spent 10 years teaching in disadvantaged inner city schools. She argues that treating kids differently based on their parents' income, ethnicity etc isn't doing them any favours and is dumbing down the education they receive. This quote sums it up well:

of course it doesnt do the disadvantaged kids any favours but then again that was never the main purpose of such a policy , like with most social initiatives nowadays , it was always more about making PC ivory tower wooly liberal do - gooders feel smug and pious

Red Actor

podge3 wrote: »

It would also cut down on the alleged multiple claiming of childrens allowance for the same child.

I presume that Social Welfare can check names and dates of birth and identify those who share their name and dob with others. Get birth certs (probably already on file from the application) to check. I heard (sorry no source to hand) that the Nordic countries linked the payment of child unemployment top-ups to school attendance. Nomadic lifestyles vanished over a number of decades.

Back on topic: Ireland used to boast of world class education and this was possible and possibly true when the population was homogenous. The diverse school going population in the last decade, including the mainstreaming of those with learning disabilities, was meant that the children who previously got 1/30 of the teachers attention are now getting much less than this. I think that special needs/language/resource teachers benefit all of the students in the class as the "lead teacher" can give more help to the others. Very shortsighted to redeploy all of these teachers into mainstream.

As an aside, the numbers being put on traqvller children seems a bit high. The figures I remember is a population of 30,000 (about the same as native Irish speakers) so the number of schoolgoing age should be little more than 4,500

Sponge Bob

Red Actor wrote: »

As an aside, the numbers being put on traqvller children seems a bit high. The figures I remember is a population of 30,000 (about the same as native Irish speakers) so the number of schoolgoing age should be little more than 4,500

I posted census data to prove it was a lot more than 4500.

Native Irish speakers never got extra 'Language Assistants' to teach English unlike certain demographics did up to 2009. Nor are there adequate support services such as speech and language therapy for them although that is mainly a Health Board issue. In that speech and language services are inadequate anyway they are grossly inadequate-non existent for Native Irish speakers who have to wait over twice as long for basic assessment as do English speakers or non Nationals with no English.

Sleepy

SupaNova wrote: »

That could be short sighted, it would affect parents who home school. It wouldn't help the problem either to have people just show up and go through the motions when they don't want to be there or are forced to be there.

How many children don't need to be forced to go to school?!

Seriously, I know that as a child myself given the choice between a day off mitching and a day in school, I'd have chosen the former if there were no repercussions to me doing so. The repercussions of being caught on the hop for me would have been severe bollockings, withholding of my pocket money and grounding me for a few months.

If parents don't see the benefit of education for their children, another stimulus (such as withdrawing their childrens allowance) is a great means of ensuring that their kids will receive similar incentives to attend school.

Most teachers will tell you: getting disadvantaged kids through the doors of the school is the hardest bit. Once you've got them there, you can improve their lot. They might not get the same benefit from their education as a child who's parents help with homework, encourage them to read, pay for grinds etc. but they'll be better educated than their parents were and, in time, their societal grouping may catch up.

We don't have a silver bullet besides taking all disadvantaged kids into state care and shipping them off to boarding schools and let's not forget where that went wrong the last time...