The coming weeks will be important for primary education. The coming budget could contain serious and significant spending cuts that will impact directly on your child’s classroom and your school. We believe that we must all do all we can to safeguard primary education at this crucial time.
The INTO which is the professional organisation that represents teachers in the school is organising a campaign to protect expenditure on primary education to the greatest extent possible. We ask you to do your utmost to support this campaign – Give Kids their Chance.
You can find key information related to the cutbacks at http://www.into.ie/ROI/givekidstheirchance/
This December’s budget will be difficult for every family. It will also be very difficult for
primary schools and will directly affect your child. The government promised that education would be a priority and they would protect the
educational experience of children and frontline services in education.
State funding for primary schools has never been generous and as you know we rely on your
generosity to make up the shortfall. Irish class sizes are also the second biggest in Europe
with about 100,000 pupils in classes of thirty or more. More than a thousand teaching jobs
have gone already in primary schools.
Further cuts to school funding will make it increasingly difficult to pay our normal bills like
heating, insurance and cleaning. An increase in class size would make a big difference to what we teach and how we teach it.
Talk of only one extra per class is nonsense. A tiny change could see a teacher lost to the school and four or five extra pupils in some classes.
We are very proud of what has been done in this school in the area of special education. It would be most unfair if children with special needs were asked to pay a price for the bailout.
Also, cuts in this area would affect all children.
I ask you to contact your TDs before the budget and tell them that further cuts are unacceptable to you. Do this for your children!