Parents asked not to Pay for Upkeep of Primary Schools.
national |
rights, freedoms and repression |
news report 
Saturday January 27, 2007 18:14
by ChrisM
Principals ask Parents to cease Fund-raising in September '07
The Irish Primary School Principals have press-released asking Parents
of Primary school-children not to contribute cash to the upkeep and building
funds of their schools in September 2007.
This is because they would like the State to meet the exorbitant costs
of mantaining and renovating of schools. Each year we are asked to
contribute money through fund-raising drives, 'voluntary' contributions
and sales (raffles, bread sales, shows) and we do.
The cost of sending a primary school child to school is exorbitant:
There are no book-schemes.
There are no hot lunches.
Uniforms are expensive.
Shoes are expensive.
Many schools are existing on subsistence because the dept of education is
refusing to dip into its budget, the underspend in the Dept this year was in
millions.For that privilege we have a brain-drain of talented teachers to the
private sector where fees are upwards of 3,500 euros per annum, a Catholic
Board of Governors and Management Team and huge class sizes.
The state sector costs per child up to a 1,000 euros.
Some families cannot meet the annual cost.
The back to school allowance scheme is 150 euros per primary child.
Add to this the problem of accessing educational psychologists
who cost 450-500 euros if your kid has a learning difficulty, the
cost of tuition, insurance fees (all primary schools now insure
the kids against accidents and death).
Some people in Dublin can afford to send two to three kids into private
education , whilst others are deopending on outreach to bring
their kids to school and give them a hot breakfast. Many schools have
relationships with local bakeries and charities to provide sandwiches
at lunch times and home work clubs for working parents.
The campaign of asking parents not to address the issue of fund raising
in the hope that the Government will face up to the right to education
of all Irish Children ,will be updated regularly.
Comments (2 of 2)
Jump To Comment: 1 2In addition to all of this, the minister got on TV recently and tried to justify the state's denial of early intervention resources to children of families suffering from autism. Despite the fact that all experts and parents have found a proven educational methodology that has been shown to improve the prospects of autistic children, the government feels it knows better than the pedagogical experts what works. Any excuse to avoid spending money on the most vulnerable members of society.
The Department of Education budgets educational psychologists for two/three
children per primary year. One principal I spoke to tells me that she would
have upwards of fifty kids needing early intervention (which is crucial) in speech,
dsypraxia and dsylexia. These kids are wholly ignored. The waiting lists are incredibly
long for intervention.
The longer the parent waits the more difficult the situation regarding
accessing resource and remedial one to one learning.
The harder it is to get exemption in Irish.
The harder it is to register a learning 'disabled' child.
This meands that kids who are neglected by the education system cannot apply
for word processing/extra time or a reader in exams.
Some kids are eight or nine by the time a diagnosis is achieved.
This wipes them off the scale with regard to support - {not the issue
of mainstreaming which is a whole other story}
Organisation such as the dsylexia association of Ireland are not adequately
funded by the State and very few Ministers of Education attended the conferences.
This creates a private industry, in which parents pay vast amounts of cash
to get an early diagnosis and often send the child to private schools where the
pupil /teacher ratio is a lot lower.
The issue of dyslexia is to some, just a different way of learning {often visual}
the kids are gifted in many areas but the curriculum in the Dept of Education
does not take cognizance of that fact- nor does it apply simple structures
of support for people with children who don't quite 'fit' in to the mainstream
box, in fact generations of kids have been harmed and squashed down by
sucessive ministers, in order to 'keep the books' in the black.
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