HUNDREDS OF teaching posts in some of the State’s most disadvantaged areas will be lost as a result of budget changes, according to the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation.
The union said the cut – “buried in the details of the education budget” – will see these teaching posts being reallocated to schools in better-off areas.
According to the INTO, about 40 frontline teachers will be let go in 12 disadvantaged schools on the north side of Cork city. The union has called on Minister for Education and Skills Ruairí Quinn to rethink his proposals.
The INTO said the cuts resulted from the impact of several changes to the way teachers were appointed to schools. The budget proposes a new class size of 22 pupils in disadvantaged schools which the union described as “simply inadequate” and still above the EU average.
The union said the new proposal represented a real cutback and an increase in class size in the most disadvantaged schools.
Another proposal is to cut any posts that schools had been allowed to retain from previous schemes to tackle disadvantage. Four hundred of these teaching posts are to be taken out of disadvantaged schools.
The method of allocating resource/learning support teachers to schools is also to be changed from a pupil-based system to a class system. Until now, disadvantaged schools got one resource teacher for every 80 pupils. Under the class-based system, one resource teacher will be provided for every five classes or 110 pupils in a disadvantaged school. The union called this an “effective cut of nearly 40 per cent in schools where the need for these teachers is greatest”.
General secretary of the INTO Sheila Nunan said disadvantaged schools faced huge challenges in areas such as speech and language skills, social skills, literacy and numeracy. Pastoral care needs were more acute in disadvantaged schools. “Teachers are frontline when it comes to services to disadvantaged children. Every day they deal with its consequences such as poverty, hunger, alienation, marginalisation and anti-social behaviour,” she added. “The plan to cut so many teaching jobs in these schools must be reviewed.”
The union said the cumulative impact of these changes would be to devastate staffing in disadvantaged schools which, it said, suffered most from cuts in last year’s budget.