School timetable good news for parents

PARENTS will be better able to plan after-school care and holidays after a standardised school holiday timetable was agreed yesterday.

From September 1, parents can look forward to a standardised school year for primary and post-primary schools.

Education Minister Noel Dempsey is expected to announce details of the new holiday and mid-term timetable within days. While teachers’ unions and department officials yesterday reached agreement on the issue, the department last night declined to comment on the proposed new timetable agreement.

A department spokesperson said: “Officials and unions have been talking over the past two weeks and good progress was made.”

Parent associations, however, welcomed progress on their long overdue demands for a standardised academic year.

A delighted Barbara Johnston of the National Congress of Catholic Secondary Schools Parents Association said: “For the first time ever, parents will know from September that holiday and mid-term breaks in all schools will coincide.

“The agreement shows recognition by the teacher unions of the difficulties many parents face. Some parents, with children at different schools, were having a worrying and difficult time in juggle their own time off to coincide with school breaks.”

She added: “The problem of not having a common school holiday year boiled down to the fact that when children had a break, parents didn’t. Many had to juggle work and home commitments in order to cope with a situation where children were on different mid-term breaks.

“Parents would have needed nine weeks’ holidays to coincide with the mid-term breaks,” Ms Johnston said.

The teacher unions had agreed to progress the issue as part of the benchmarking deal and their commitment under the national pay programme Sustaining Progress.

Earlier this month, Mr Dempsey demanded agreement should be reached before the post-primary schools take their summer holidays.

He warned unions that teachers would not benefit from the 13% benchmarking deal unless a deal was struck on a standardised school year.

Mr Dempsey had also advised an Oireachtas Education Committee: “We cannot pay the benchmarking money unless we make progress. It’s as simple as that.”

Union representatives also confirmed yesterday that progress was achieved but declined to elaborate.

The planned common holiday arrangements will apply to all national and post-primary schools although secondary schools will continue to benefit from longer summer and February mid-term breaks. Primary schools receive 183 tuition days and secondary school students 167 days.