Rivals rally over small school cuts
March 15, 2012
Sporting rivalries are being abandoned as Cork and Kerry communities plan a joint protest over cuts to small school teacher numbers at Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Sunday.
Tomás Ó Sé and Noel O’Leary, past pupils of gaeltacht schools, support the protest, which sees the Save our Small Schools groups in both counties join forces with Eagraíocht na Scoileanna Gaeltachta, which represents schools in gaeltacht areas.
They are campaigning against changes to staffing levels in schools of four teachers or less, which will see over 70 schools lose a staff member in September.
The group will gather outside the grounds, where the Cork-Kerry national football league clash will be preceded by the Cork-Galway hurling tie which throws in at 12.45pm.
IRISH EXAMINER
Five-year plan gets a guarded welcome
March 13, 2012
A €1.5bn Government plan to build or extend 275 schools has been given a guarded welcome.
However, Education Minister Ruairi Quinn’s five-year school building plan was also the subject of complaints of ‘spin’ and claims he was repackaging old announcements of some projects that are already under way.
Among the projects to be funded between now and 2016 are:
* 106 new schools at primary level.
* 65 large extensions to existing primary schools.
* 43 new second-level schools.
* 49 large extensions to second-level schools.
* eight new special schools and extensions to four special schools.
The 275 schools concerned include the 40 primary and second-level schools which Mr Quinn said would be set up in the next few years to meet demand because of growing populations, mostly in Dublin and surrounding counties.
By 2018, the number of children at school is expected to grow by 45,000 at primary level to more than 550,000, and from 351,000 to 376,000 at second level.
“We have to ensure every child growing up in Ireland can access a physical school place,” said Mr Quinn.
“Our programme unveiled today means that schools and parents will be able to plan much better for their children’s education at a time when enrolments at both primary and second level are rising dramatically”.
The 275 projects will cost €1.5bn of the €2bn to be spent on schools up to 2016, and Mr Quinn says this will create 18,000 jobs, including 3,000 indirect jobs.
The Construction Industry Federation (CIF) praised the minister and his department, saying it was the type of investment needed to get the sector working again.
However, it also warned that fairer tender guidelines must be set to ensure most contractors are eligible to compete for the work.
“We don’t want to see a situation arise where many Irish contractors are not allowed to even tender for these projects,” said CIF director general Tom Parlon.
“There is a very strict tendering process in place for school building. It does not help the economy if these building projects start to go to construction companies from outside of the State. That will not provide a boost to employment in the Irish construction sector.”
Fianna Fáil education spokesman Brendan Smith said many of the schools listed as “new” projects had already been announced and were at an advanced stage of planning or construction.
The €430m being spent this year includes building work beginning on 56 schools already announced in December. This year’s fund is down from €500m last year and the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) said the withdrawal of funding for repairs and maintenance will mean schools will find it hard to maintain buildings to an acceptable standard.
The union said the department’s claim that the plan would result in 106 new primary schools was confusing, as just 17 brand new schools would be built and the other projects were new buildings for schools operating in prefabs or dilapidated accommodation.
“Many will still have to endure unsatisfactory buildings for several more years,” said INTO general secretary Sheila Nunan.
“However, there are many more schools in need of urgent upgrade which are not covered, and parents and teachers will want to know when those buildings will be addressed.”
IRISH EXAMINER
Joy as pupils get to wave goodbye to prefabs
March 13, 2012
Pupils, parents and staff of an East Cork gaelscoil cheered the news that work should begin on their long-awaited new school building within three years.
Although the project is listed as going to construction in 2014 or 2015, it is a welcome commitment for all concerned at Gaelscoil Mhainistir na Chorann in Midleton.
Principal Máiréad Uí Fhloinn, said they were delighted to finally see a commitment in writing on the Department of Education website. The school has been operating from the Midleton Community Centre and prefab classrooms alongside it since 1999.
“We will have to get through the next few years in the space we have and with increasing enrolments, but we’re hopeful that things will be moved forward speedily,” she said.
The 389-pupil school has 14 teachers and a number of special needs teachers, but growing interest from local families will see it become a 20-teacher school next September.
Ms Uí Fhloinn said the department expects it will become a 24-classroom school in the next few years. “There are still some site options, but we have a commitment now and the school board and parents’ association will be keeping the pressure on to ensure the commitment is met.
“We have been here since 1999 and we’ve had a lot of setbacks down the years, so we’re looking at this very positively,” she said.
The news was mixed for a number of Cork schools, including St Angela’s College in the city centre where planning permission was granted late last year for an extension and refurbishment first promised in 1999.
The €10m project has been listed to begin construction in 2015 or 2016, which local minister of state Kathleen Lynch said would provide a campus to be proud of and much-needed construction jobs.
Gaelscoil an Ghoirt Álainn’s controversial project on the Tank Field in Mayfield, has been pencilled in for building work to begin next year.
The granting of planning for the 16-classroom school by An Bord Pleanála in December was greeted with disappointment by some local residents, concerned about the loss of the field as a public amenity, after city councillors had voted against rezoning for the project last July.
IRISH EXAMINER
€1.5bn spend to prioritise new schools
March 12, 2012
The Government will today outline plans for dozens of new schools as part of a €1.5bn construction programme.
But a dwindling capital budget and rising birthrates in larger cities and towns mean the bulk of Education Minister Ruairi Quinn’s school building fund up to 2016 will focus on new schools and extensions, rather than upgrades of sub-standard buildings.
The 2012 school building programme announced before Christmas was for a €430m spend, down from €500m last year and almost €580m in 2010.
Cork TDs have welcomed the plans. Ciarán Lynch, Labour TD for Cork South Central, hailed the plan, said: “This is a statement of massive investment in education for the Cork region. It also plans for the future to ensure that newer communities built in recent years will have schools built locally.”
West Cork’s Fine Gael TD, Jim Daly, said the announcement meant construction could begin in long-overdue projects in Kinsale, Clonakilty and Skibbereen, where three secondary schools will be amalgamated in to one new building on a greenfield site in 2015.
“This confirmation from the minister gives a degree of certainty to the schools involved and allow them to concentrate on the day-to-day task of teaching and learning,” said Mr Daly.
The emphasis is on communities where most of the 100,000 additional pupils will be attending school, with 80,000 of those places to be provided in start-up schools and the rest through extensions.
Mr Quinn announced last June that 40 schools — 20 primary and 20 secondary — will be needed by 2017, 29 of them in Dublin and surrounding counties, six in Cork, three in Galway and one each in counties Cavan and Wexford.
The five-year plan should give a transparent picture of the projects which are being prioritised for funding, although it is unclear at this stage if Mr Quinn’s department will provide projected timescales for work to begin on each project. Such a system operated on the Department of Education website during Noel Dempsey’s term almost a decade ago, although delays in acquiring sites and securing planning permission can make it difficult to accurately assess delivery of school building works.
An estimated €5m a year will be saved in a plan unveiled last week to allow schools build classrooms instead of renting prefabs.
Mr Quinn said seven primary schools to open this year and in 2013 will be under the patronage of Educate Together, four will have the local VEC as their patrons, and An Foras Pátrúnachta will be patron to two. No churches sought patronage of any of the new primary schools.
IRISH EXAMINER
Splitting Irish course would help language
March 8, 2012
The recent exchanges in your paper about the possibility of making Irish optional for the Leaving Certificate raise many serious questions about the point and purpose of it being compulsory.
I love the language and continue to read it and use it on those very rare occasions where this is possible.
My love of Irish was generated by the exciting and interesting way it was taught at my first school. We spoke Irish on the playground with great enthusiasm. American tourists would attempt to listen to us. Occasionally they would invite us to the school boundary so that they could hear us speak.
We accepted the invitation but demanded ten shillings for the service. This entrepreneurial opportunity was not to be missed.
As I grew up, what I found difficult to handle was the way the Irish language was caught up in Ireland’s obsession with the past. Speaking Irish was seen as a distinctive way of not being English. It was offered as a means to political and ideological ends, not as an end in itself. Many of my school mates who had difficulty learning the language felt they were pawns in a form of crass nationalism and came to despise Irish.
The Irish language puts us in touch with a form of thinking and speaking that has been embedded in the way we Irish speak English.
I have spent many an hour explaining to my English friends and colleagues that we do not speak a defective form of English but one that has been enriched by the rhythms and music of the Irish language.
The splitting of the Leaving Certificate course into Irish Language and Irish Literature would do much to enliven the teaching and learning of the language.
Philip O’Neill
Edith Road
Oxford
IRISH EXAMINER
Cuts will shut 19 Irish-language bodies
February 28, 2012
The infrastructure needed by Irish speakers is about to be destroyed.
Foras na Gaeilge is proposing to abolish annual core funding for Irish-language organisations. They intend to invite applications for three-year schemes in a limited range of activities.
Under Foras na Gaeilge’s proposal, 19 longstanding Irish-language organisations will cease to exist, their services will be no more and staff will have to be let go.
Foras na Gaeilge have not carried out any review of the effectiveness, or the efficiency, of the Irish-language organisations, and their proposal is at odds with international language-planning principles. We believe that the Foras na Gaeilge ‘new funding model’ is deeply flawed, and will prove detrimental to the development of Irish across the country.
We call for a permanent funding structure, based on strategic planning and long-term goals, for the Irish-language voluntary sector.
Professor Colin Williams, Cardiff University, Wales
Professor Muiris Ó Laoire, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand
Professor Dónall Ó Baoill, Queens University Belfast
Dr Wilson McLeod, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Dr Conchúr Ó Giollagáin, Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge, NUI, Galway
Dr Pádraig Ó Duibhir, St Patrick’s College
Laoise Ní Thuairisg, Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge, NUI, Galway
Kevin De Barra, Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge, D2
IRISH EXAMINER
Move threatens ‘to kill off Irish language organisations’
February 28, 2012
Irish language experts have warned that changes to how organisations promoting it are funded threaten to put them out of existence and to put staff out of jobs.
A new funding model proposed by Foras na Gaeilge would see money given out for a range of schemes to promote the Irish language. It would replace the current grant system under which €7m of its €18m budget last year was given directly to 19 voluntary sector Irish language organisations. A 2010 review showed half the €8m given to the organisations in 2008 went on salaries and Foras na Gaeilge says the proportion allocated to pay reached 59% last year.
Foras na Gaeilge is the all-island body responsible for promotion of the language and is supported through the North-South Ministerial Council.
But, as a public consultation process on the proposals gets underway, a group of academics has said Foras na Gaeilge has not carried out any review of the effectiveness or efficiency of the groups and the plan goes against the principles of international language planning.
“We believe that the Foras na Gaeilge new funding model is deeply flawed, and will prove detrimental to the development of Irish across the country,” they said.
In a letter published in today’s Irish Examiner, the group, which includes leading academics from Belfast, Dublin, Galway, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales, said the 19 Irish language organisations will cease to exist, their services will be no more and staff will have to be let go. They are supported by a group which represents most of the organisations in the voluntary sector, which has also started an online petition.
A spokesperson for Foras na Gaeilge said while there may be some inevitable job losses, it was no different to other publicly funded sectors.
“Foras na Gaeilge does have an evaluation process for how its money is spent,” she said.
“The new schemes will be open to all of the 19 core-funded organisations to apply and will be funded over three years,” she said.
The headings under which schemes will be funded include education, arts, youth, pre-school and community supports, with funding to be provided on a three-year basis.
The public consultation will include a series of meetings next month, beginning in Tralee on Mar 5 and continuing in Belfast, Galway and Dublin until Mar 14. Details of the proposed funding arrangements can be found online at www.gaeilge.ie/samhail
IRISH EXAMINER
Rethink on teaching foreign languages needed
February 28, 2012
I don’t think the Government should resurrect Enda Kenny’s proposal to downgrade Irish at senior level (Matt Cooper, Feb 24), but it should revisit the counterproductive and asinine decision to scrap continental languages in national schools.
It was heartbreaking to watch the recent news item on RTÉ showing an enthusiastic Italian teacher with her pupils, who were obviously greatly enjoying learning the Italian language and culture — and knowing their course was going to be axed very soon.
As one who was lucky enough to be reared bilingually — in English and French — I can testify to the enormous advantage of learning different languages at a young age. Grammar was taught, but it took a back seat, which meant that it made more sense and was far less boring than grammar taught in the traditional way.
This combination enabled me to learn other languages, including Irish, relatively quickly later in life. I believe children who attend Gaelscoileanna also tend to be more proficient in other languages.
There is no reason why Irish people cannot become proficient in several languages. This would not only be an immense advantage in the hard and competitive economic world — so the initial outlay would soon be recouped — but enable people to fully enjoy other countries’ cultures.
Judy Peddle
Love Lane
Charleville
Co Cork
IRISH EXAMINER
Our language strategy is leaving us at a loss for the right words
February 24, 2012
THE invoice for my eldest daughter’s summer trip to the Gaeltacht arrived the other day. It is for a sizeable amount, sufficiently large to make me to gulp and wonder if this is a good investment of money, for that and a number of other reasons.
It is for a sizeable amount, sufficiently large to make me to gulp and wonder if this is a good investment of money, for that and a number of other reasons.
Firstly, here are the reasons why I’ll most probably sign the required cheque (other than being told by my wife to shut up and get on with it). My daughter’s Irish language capabilities were improved greatly by the experience last year on her visit to the Gaeltacht. She had just finished primary school and was heading into secondary school.
Her Irish proficiency was sufficient, but probably just about. Immersion, even if only for a three-week period, was extremely beneficial and has helped enormously in her first year in secondary school, allowing her to work during Irish class comfortably alongside those children who had completed their primary education as gaelige.
Secondly, the exposure to the Gaeltacht culture has to be good for a city girl, as well as the meeting with people from other parts of the country who have different experiences of growing up to her own. The part of Galway where she went, deep in the Gaeltacht, about an hour’s drive from Galway City, is remote and beautiful and, to a city girl, must be challenging. In addition to that the discipline that is imposed, beyond the insistence that only Irish is spoken, is reassuring to any parent. (And yes, I’m not naive enough to believe that the boys and girls do not show interest in each other, but they do that anyway 52 weeks in a year and this is part of growing up, isn’t it?).
The third and important reason why I like the idea of going to the Gaeltacht is that it gives her an opportunity that I didn’t get to learn more about her native culture and to develop her language as part of that. I wasn’t allowed as a sixth-class student to go for the month of August to Cape Clear off West Cork with my friends because I failed the entrance exam: it was deemed that I would struggle to hold a conversation and would be unable to refrain from speaking English. I thought that was the point — that it would force me to learn — but couldn’t argue it well enough in Irish. It is true that I have struggled always with spoken Irish since, doing somewhat better with written Irish during exams, but that rejection may have contributed to my decision to give less priority to Irish for study and exams during secondary school, making it my one pass level subject for the Leaving Cert. (Poor teaching and a dodgy syllabus probably played their parts too). However, I would like my children to have a more positive experience of the Irish language than I did and more opportunity to embrace it, if that’s what they want.
So why my doubts about this year’s Gaeltacht visit, other than the cost? Well the fourth reason why I’ll sign the cheque actually is linked exactly to those doubts. If I want my daughter’s education to progress, so as to give her a good chance of making her own way in life as an adult, I want her to achieve good exam results. There are many other measurements of how a life can progress, and happiness be achieved, but all rational evidence suggests that educational attainment improves the chances of things working out well and the effort put into achieving that is very important as well to all aspects of life. As Irish is compulsory for the Leaving Cert I want her to be able to do as well as possible, even if my extremely limited proficiency did not necessarily harm my career progression.
But what of other languages, foreign languages that might help to assist her work opportunities in the future, especially if she has to go abroad as an adult to get work? Am I restricting her by placing such an emphasis on Irish instead of asking her to concentrate on a foreign language with similar emphasis? Is it her time well spent? Is this a fault of the Irish educational system, that we spend too much time on Irish at both primary and secondary level, to the exclusion of early immersion in other languages, or sufficient development of those languages at second level?
This came to mind earlier this week with the announcement of the creation of about 1,000 jobs at PayPal in Dundalk. The company will be looking for some foreign language proficiency among many of its employees, particularly those in so-called “customer service” roles. I suspect that many of these people will have to be imported because native Irish people will not have the sufficient language skills to be able to deal with foreign customers.
That would not be the case in many other countries where they learn a range of foreign languages and from an early age. It is noticeable, for example, how people from Scandinavian countries tend to be as fluent in English as they are in their own languages. This is often put down to learning English from a very early age. Why do we wait until children are already in secondary school to start learning other languages? The easy blame goes to the time devoted instead to Irish (and yet with such poor results, given the standards of proficiency, limited use, and sometimes levels of hostility shown towards the language).
In a strange way, however, our problem may not be Irish, but English. We are lucky that we converse in the international language of trade, that we share a common first spoken language with Britain and the US, Australia and Canada. Other countries tend to learn how to speak English so that they can improve their business and work opportunities. This may make us lazy. What’s the need to speak German or Spanish for example, when anyone we want to deal with from there probably speaks English too? If we learn a bit of French it seems that it’s merely to make things a bit easier when we go there on holidays.
MY daughter is learning German at secondary school. She is one of a small number of children in her year to be doing so. I asked her if she would choose German as her subject for a number of reasons, but mainly to do with future employability. Germany is a country undergoing major demographic shifts which means that it is starting to face labour shortages. There are going to be major job opportunities in the future for those who have the German language as well as educational qualifications. And given that Germany is the powerhouse of the EU to which we are bound there is no harm in adding to her options by giving her the chance to learn the language.
Some people have said to me that German is too hard a language to learn, but what foreign language isn’t if you are coming to it late, as happens in our educational system? Others have told me that I need to look further east. Well no matter how hard German is I suspect that it is it is going to come more naturally than learning Mandarin. I’m not convinced yet that the idea that our children should all be learning Chinese is appropriate. When it comes to language we need to walk before we try to run.
So my suggestion: Irish remains a language that is compulsory in primary school and up to Junior Cert. It becomes optional for the Leaving Cert cycle then, as I believe Fine Gael wanted but didn’t put into the programme for government. In return, we must introduce a foreign language, preferably German, as an additional subject for the primary cycle, with teachers being promised that there will be no further cuts in their number or their pay and conditions as compensation for its introduction. It means investment but wouldn’t it be worth it? Let’s at least have a reasoned and practical debate about our language strategy please.
IRISH EXAMINER
School funds cut to pay for U-turn by Quinn
February 23, 2012
Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has been accused of robbing Peter to pay Paul after cutting budgets for all primary schools in order to fund a U-turn on teacher cuts in the most disadvantaged schools.
He bowed to pressure for a U-turn on one of the most harshly criticised Budget 2012 cutbacks by allowing over 130 disadvantaged primary schools to keep 235 extra teachers.
However, every primary school in the country will have a smaller budget this year in order to fund the €2.8m reversal.
It will mean no cuts to urban primary schools in his department’s Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (Deis) programme.
The change gives a full reprieve to 25 schools due to have lost at least three teachers they kept from disadvantage schemes before Deis was set up in 2005. A Department of Education review found that another 107 would have lost up to two teachers from pre-Deis schemes.
However, the axe will still fall on the remainder of the 428 posts which were due to have been cut at 33 primary and 163 second-level schools.
The minister had already signalled that any U-turn would be funded from elsewhere in the schools’ budget, and he is bringing forward the phased cut in capitation funding for all 3,200 primary schools. Instead of a 2% cut this year and a similar reduction next year, a 3.5% cut is being imposed in 2012.
This will see the rate payable for running costs cut further, from €183 for every pupil to €178. It means an additional cut of €750 to the already over €1,000 being withdrawn from the annual budget of an average 150-pupil primary school.
The Irish Primary Principals Network called it a “zero-sum game”, claiming another cut would leave many schools unable to pay for basics like lighting and heating. “This comes as hard-pressed families, many of them hit by job losses, are struggling to make voluntary contributions to help cover schools’ running costs,” said IPPN director Seán Cottrell.
A Department of Education spokesperson said 92% of the €3.08bn primary school budget goes on pay and pensions and 6% on capitation grants, so there was limited scope for alternative savings.
Mr Quinn admitted making a mistake in the budget and said he was reversing the cuts in some disadvantaged schools after analysing the likely impact. In a further concession to the most disadvantaged primary schools, they will be given additional learning support staff to help pupils in reading and maths.
The minister has also made allowances for small primary schools due to lose a teacher in September if they can show they would have increased pupil numbers. The department found that 73 schools were due to have been affected by staffing changes for schools with five teachers or less.
Only a few are likely to benefit from the widened appeal system but the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation welcomed the move. It said it would have been nonsense for schools to lose a teacher this year, only to regain it next year.
IRISH EXAMINER
