Pupils ‘crippled by drink’ in mid-teens

PUPILS are coming into the classroom exhausted, hungover and unable to absorb information, an education conference will hear today.

The schoolchildren, as young as 15 and 16, are working long hours in supermarkets, pubs and garages and spending the money on alcohol and drugs, leaving them unable to stay awake in class, says the Irish Vocational Education Association (IVEA).

As the association’s two-day congress opens this morning, IVEA president, Michael Moriarty, says it is time for society to wake up and for parents to examine the example they are setting for their children.

“We’re seeing more and more of the Monday and Friday morning blues. There was a time when adults only were impacted by the Monday morning blues. Now it’s our pupils. Our teachers report that it’s a huge issue.

“There is a cultural acceptance of alcohol in particular and it must be tackled at government level. Children are being brought into pubs, particularly on a Sunday afternoon, from a very young age. And parents then wonder why they are taking up drinking at 10 or 11. It’s time we examined what impact example is having on our young people,” said Mr Moriarty.

Teenagers are very demanding when it comes to having money, he said. “The minimum wage means that those who are working have even more money to spend. Having a good time has to be associated with how much a person can drink. Some can handle it, others are the casualties. Many of our pupils are crippled by drink in their early and mid-teens, yet we’re doing nothing about it.”

Camera phones are also creating huge problems in schools, he said, and the damage they can cause in areas such as changing rooms is enormous.

“They are now a source of great risk in our schools and can seriously damage and infringe on people’s rights. Dressing rooms and the like offer huge opportunity for abuse of such technology and something must be done now at a national level to set down a code of practice for their use.”

A motion at the conference shows the level of concern at recent incidents concerning the use of camera phones and at the potential for this technology to be abused.

Teachers and school managers are particularly concerned at the effects such abuse could have on students. The conference is expected to back a motion urging the Department of Education & Science to set up an appropriate code of practice throughout all schools concerning the use of camera phones.

It is also expected to urge the government to urgently investigate what measures generally need to be put in place in order to reduce the incidence of abuse of this technology. The motion is proposed by both the City of Dublin VEC and County Roscommon VEC.