Schools give road safety low priority

THE National Safety Council has blamed serious under-funding for the low priority given to road safety education in Irish schools, as highlighted in a major new international study.

NSC chairman, Eddie Shaw, yesterday expressed concern about the findings of an EU-commissioned report which criticised the lack of prominence given to road safety education.

The results of the Rose-25 project funded by the European Commission - highlighted in the Irish Examiner earlier this week - noted the low standing of road safety in the curriculum as well as poor support and training for teachers.

Although the report praised two road safety education programmes which are devised by the NSC, it expressed regret that they are not being widely used, despite being sent to most schools. Only one in 10 second level schools is completing the NSC’s “Staying Alive” programme, according to the study.

Mr Shaw claimed the NSC’s annual budget of around €5 million, of which €2.8m is provided by the Government, is insufficient to provide the desirable level of road safety education. “It is wholly under-funded,” he said.

Mr Shaw claimed the level of State funding in the Republic was minimal compared to financial resources given to road safety programmes in countries like Australia and Northern Ireland.

“Government funding has never been provided on the scale required. Other countries have multiples of the money made available to us,” said Mr Shaw.

However, he accepted the NSC had to share some responsibility for the criticisms as it had been forced to prioritise funding, deliberately focusing spending on public awareness campaigns directed at the primary cause of deaths on Irish roads.

Ideally, he said the NSC would like to develop support programmes that would include a role for parents around the “Be Safe” project which is disseminated to all primary schools.

A spokesperson for Education Minister, Mary Hanafin, said primary teachers were given two days in-service training for the subject of Social, Personal and Health Education which covers road safety. The number of days training was more varied for second-level teachers.