Staff appointment delays are ‘hurting schools’

STATE education bodies are being restricted from expanding and improving services because of Department of Education delays appointing key staff, a conference heard yesterday.

Only 13 of the 33 city and county Vocational Education Committees (VECs) have education officers, with three more to be appointed in January.

Their work is to oversee the work of schools, further education colleges, Youthreach centres, Traveller training centres, adult education programmes and other VEC schemes.

Kevin O’Reilly, a delegate at the Irish Vocational Education Association (IVEA) annual congress, said VECs have had to cope with unforeseen levels of immigration and demand for further education courses in their schools and colleges.

“You’d expect any garage to have a mechanic, a swimming pool to have a lifeguard and that every VEC would have an education officer, but they don’t,” the Tipperary North Riding VEC representative said.

VECs are legally obliged to produce a five-year education plan, but Mr O’Reilly said their preparation and implementation is time consuming.

“The chief executives of every committee need education officers to focus on the purely education elements of the VECs’ work,” he said.

The city and county VECs in Dublin and Cork have had education officers for a number of years. Appointments were recently made to Co Kerry, Co Louth, Co Wicklow, and Co Donegal while there were appointments earlier this year to Co Kildare, Co Limerick, Co Meath and Co Sligo VECs. Further sanction for appointments are due in January to county VECs in Clare, Galway and Mayo.

IVEA general secretary Michael Moriarty said getting Department of Education sanction for education officers was like pulling teeth from hens but that efforts are continuing for more appointments to help VECs fulfill their legal obligations.

But Education Minister Mary Hanafin said that not all VECs are big enough to warrant appointments.

“Some of the VECs are very small, some of them have only one or two schools so the chief executive has the statutory responsibility for education. Education officers are assigned to the very big VECs with a lot of schools, and elsewhere the chief executive is well able to carry out the education function,” she said.