Tough start to the year for struggling primary teachers

Teaching Matters: February is the shortest month, but there is no doubt that in primary schools July and August appear to be the shortest. It seems like only yesterday that the summer holidays stretched out before us, writes Valerie Monaghan.

What seemed an eternity from the start of July until September 1st has passed in the blink of an eye. By now the new school year is well under way and the summer holidays seem a distant memory.

But this summer, more than others, it seemed that education never really went away. Along with the usual press coverage of exams and the ever earlier "back to school" advertising, issues such as testing and reading standards in primary schools dominated the news for a time.

So it was not entirely unexpected that when the dust settled on new classes and book lists, a major topic of conversation among primary teachers was the Minister for Education's proposal to introduce standardised testing for seven- and 11-year-olds. If the Minister has his way, the first pupils to be put through this testing regime will be the four-year-olds who started school in Junior Infants this month.

This has gone down like a lead balloon with teachers. For a start, there are fears that it will turn the new curriculum on its head. In the English curriculum a major positive innovation has been to emphasise the pivotal role of oral language. Indeed, the curriculum states that oral language is as important as reading and writing. Primary teachers, especially those who teach infants, have recognised its importance and spend a lot of time developing young children's speaking and listening skills.

Yet now the Minister is preparing to assess pupils and their schools with a written test only. Teachers are rightly complaining that no sooner is the ink dry on the new curriculum and teachers have begun implementing it that the Minister wants to change it round and drag us all back to the days of the Primary Certificate. Out will go all the aspirations of the new curriculum in English, which will become dominated by the test.

Teachers fear that instead of being able to spend time building a good language base for future learning, national tests for seven-year-olds will force them to fast-track writing and reading skills. So, built on dodgy foundations, children's literacy skills will be damaged in the long run.

There is a definite anti-Minister mood among teachers, because there was no consultation with them before this announcement was made. But what is really raising the blood pressure is the fact that within the next few weeks they will identify four- and five-year-olds who have real learning problems. Most of these will not have gone to a private pre-school, because their parents couldn't afford it. The Minister is behind in meeting his promises to provide a proper early childhood education, so vital time is being lost.

Some of these children will have mild reading problems that can be "fixed" fairly quickly if they get help from a learning support teacher. The earlier the better. Others have more serious needs and will need long-term help from a resource teacher. What teachers are saying is that they will know for certain who will need help.

But this month, on returning to school, teachers found out that the Department of Education is planning to remove resource and learning support teaching hours from over 1,000 schools. Teachers in these schools are furious that they will have even fewer hours to devote to children who really need help.

To them, the Minister's talk of using assessment results to target resources at schools that need them rings hollow. Pupils in these schools have already been assessed by psychologists, many of them working for the Department of Education. Based on those assessments, these pupils got extra teaching hours. If the cuts in teaching hours go ahead, many of these children will have the supports that are in place taken away.

How can the Minister claim that he wants assessment to target resources while, at the same time, ignoring assessments that are already in place and cutting back on resources anyway?

There are fears that more cutbacks are in the pipeline. Up to this summer, many children who needed extra help got a special needs assistant to help them in school. One teacher told me that in her new class this year, she has a child with Asperger's Syndrome. The child can't cope with school and the teacher can't give the attention needed because there are 28 others in the class. His parents and the school applied for a special needs assistant to keep the child safe in school. They got a special needs assistant for only 12-and-a-half hours a week. This is just over half of what is needed.

This is by no means a unique case. Teachers in these schools want to know, when the two-and-a-half hours per day is used up, what happens for the rest of the day. If the child needs the help of the special needs assistant for health and safety reasons for one half of the day, then why not for the other half? Or is it now Department policy that these children should have a shortened school day and only be in class when the special needs assistant is employed?

These issues have made the start of the school year a difficult one. Primary schools want to be inclusive places where all children are supported. To do this they need government support, and adequate resources.

Valerie Monaghan is principal of Scoil Chíaráin primary school in Glasnevin, Dublin