IPPN

'It's awful having to leave two of them go next September'

Last Updated: Wednesday, 29 October 2008 09:00

By Niall Murray, Education Correspondent
CHILDREN at St Mary's National School in Killenaule, Co Tipperary, will lose two of their current teachers next summer because of the Government's budget move to increase class sizes.

With 178 pupils on the roll book, it will be one child short of the 179 needed next year to keep its seven mainstream teachers, and will lose one teacher as a result.

The numbers required to sanction a non-teaching principal is also going up one to 179, so Maria McGrath will have to leave the principal's office to go back to the classroom. She will therefore have to replace another existing teacher, as she will account for one of the six teachers left at the school.

"We have great staff here and the best resource of any school is its teachers, it's just awful having to leave two of them go next September. Not only that loss, but some of the children will be in a class of at least 34 as a result, so we can keep the junior infants in a small group," she said.

Ms McGrath also fears her own class next year may lose out due to her duties as principal: "We won't be able to afford a substitute, even once a month, if a teacher rings in sick and the rooms aren't big enough to take nearly 40 children if we were to spread that teacher's class around. In the interest of health and safety, we'll probably have no option but to send them home."

The anger of the school community will be expressed outside the Dáil this evening where a mini bus is expected to carry up to 30 teachers, parents and board members.

The loss of two teachers at this average school strongly support the argument of the Irish Primary Principals' Network (IPPN) and the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) that around 1,000 jobs could be lost at the country's 3,300 primary schools next September.

They include hundreds of staff teaching English as an additional language and those being withdrawn from schools previously designated as disadvantaged.

Mr O'Keeffe insisted yesterday that the impact would be the loss of 200 teaching jobs in primary schools and 200 at second level, because of the extra 11,000 primary and 3,000 extra second level students in the system next year.

Fine Gael education spokesperson Brian Hayes challenged the minister to publish the figures on which his prediction is based, by releasing enrolment numbers sent to his department by schools in the past month.