Anomaly means school loses a teacher

Monday, February 13, 2012

I write in defence of rural schools suffering under strange new government regulations.

In our school we had enough for 4 teachers last year, 82.

And we expect to have enough for four teachers next year, 85.

Yet we’re told we will lose a teacher. The department moved the goal posts in mid-term.

Now they say we should have had 83 "last year".

Even if our numbers continue to rise, due to this sleight-of-hand, we won’t get back our fourth teacher for at least two years. In the meantime, we lose a great teacher and the children will be packed into 3 overcrowded classrooms, back to the bad old days.

Naturally this unreasonable anomaly leaves the local community extremely angry.

I hope politicians will take note and work to change this retrospective rule.

In doing so I hope they’ll also consider the wider implication of new rules, the impending loss of many of our invaluable local schools, the bedrock of rural community life.

Fr Con Buckley
Knocknagree
Mallow
Co Cork

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, February 13, 2012