Falling family incomes add to cutback effects

The falling incomes of families across the social divide is adding to the effects of cuts to education services in schools.

A survey of over 140 schools and colleges for the Teachers’ Union of Ireland found reduced Government funding and staffing cuts already impact highly on students with special needs, Traveller pupils or international students.

TUI education officer Bernie Judge said members are seeing more instances of students being unable to pay for trips on co-curricular activities, such as geography field trips or visits to historical sites.

But now because schools’ budgets have also been cut, they can no longer afford to subsidise students so the activities are curtailed.

Ms Judge said it can be particularly difficult for rural schools, which have to hire a bus for almost all activities, but this is now not possible as often. “It could often be families coming from more well-off backgrounds but where circumstances have changed, where one or both parents have lost their jobs, and limited income has to stretch to high mortgages and other payments.”

Almost 60% of teachers who took part in the survey believe reduced incomes have had a significant detrimental impact on students’ capacity to buy school books or specialist materials for subjects like art.

June Coghlan, a first-time delegate from TUI’s Dublin City Post-Primary branch, said the protection of inequality in this country needs to stop.

“Even during the Celtic Tiger, there were canteens set up in schools to feed young people from disadvantaged areas. So even in those times, people living below the poverty line didn’t have enough money to feed their children adequately,” she said.

Ms Judge said the re-arranging of timetables due to previous cutbacks have led to reduced supports for students with special educational needs, one-to-one or small group teaching and language supports.

Because of further cuts to staffing from September, teachers at more than half the schools surveyed expect to see further restrictions on assistance for special needs students, larger classes and less subject choices.

With an average of four middle-management posts lost to each of their schools since 2008 and at least another one due to go from September, they expect further reductions to guidance, counselling and other pastoral support that are important to student welfare.

“In many schools where our members work, students come from backgrounds where there are family issues they have to deal with, whether it’s parents in prison or drugs or other personal issues,” Ms Judge said.

She said another difficulty was around the issue of psychological assessments needed by Leaving Certificate students with learning disabilities to support college access scheme applications.