Teenagers ‘paid to attend school’

TEENAGERS have been paid to attend a second level school in Kilkenny, an independent inquiry has found.

The report on payments to students of Kilkenny City Vocational School was given to members of Co Kilkenny Vocational Education Committee (VEC) last week.

Students claimed last month that they were being paid €50 a week in two instalments to show up. However, it was unclear who was making the alleged payments.

In response to the report school principal Kathy McSorley strongly denied any such payments were made to students for attending school. She also defended the school against the report’s criticisms about the quality of services and said every student got a good education.

The report was compiled by the chief executive of County Waterford VEC, Paddy Lavelle and is expected to be discussed at a meeting of County Kilkenny VEC today.

It said payments were made in respect of attendance from an unknown source without County Kilkenny VEC’s authorisation.

Mr Lavelle said there were indications of a particularly negative atmosphere in the school which was counter-productive and needed remediation. His report also revealed students who were on the roll since September 2004 had not been in attendance.

“Some students who were alleged to have been paid to go to school were not known by teachers to be in their class, even though they were on the school roll,” the four-page document said. Mr Lavelle also noted that this specific school roll for the Leaving Certificate Applied class had not been seen by teachers supposed to be teaching these children until he showed it to them.

He found the roll was not held in the staff room like the other school rolls.

Mr Lavelle said Ms McSorley told him the group had been separated from others in order to provide a needs-based educational experience. But, he said, the education being provided to students at the centre of the payments controversy was only a sham.

“These students will not achieve the educational aims being set for them,” he said. “Students and other teachers spoke of this separated group as not being in class, of seeming to have the freedom to come and go as they pleased while not being responsive to normal disciplinary rules,” Mr Lavelle said.

He said he was troubled by a conversation he witnessed between one of these students and the deputy principal which he said: “betrayed a profound lack of respect for the deputy principal and gave a sense of dysfunction described in teacher and student accounts of school relationships.”

He also noted teachers at the school who were interviewed, and who came voluntarily, spoke of great frustration, disappointment, feeling suspicious, anxious and disempowered.

The school underwent a Whole School Evaluation (WSE) by the Department of Education inspectorate in November and a report on the findings was sent to the school last month.