‘Class field trips are very much at risk’

PAT KINSELLA already has difficulty every week organising substitution cover for teachers taking students out to school events or games.

He now believes some of them will have to be sacrificed next year because of budget cutbacks.

The principal of Coláiste Choilm, a 1,200-student second level school in Ballincollig, Co Cork, is facing the same headaches as colleagues in every school in the country.

This week alone, more than a handful of classes and teams will be out of school. Junior Certificate students going to see Romeo and Juliet at Cork Opera House, a Leaving Certificate art class is visiting a pottery workshop in east Cork, a geography class will be doing a field trip and at least three teams are representing the school in different sports.

During their absence, the teachers who accompany the groups will have substitution or supervision for their classes paid for by the Department of Education.

But that will all change after Christmas when the paid cover is suspended as a result of last week’s budget, leaving Mr Kinsella with a logistical nightmare.

“Half of these activities are outside the school but they’re part of the curriculum, and they couldn’t all run based on the planned arrangements because we wouldn’t have the cover for the teachers going,” he said.

“Any activities which involve teachers going off with students to things like the Young Scientist Exhibition in January, compulsory field trips for Leaving Certificate geography, or history students going to local sites of interest, they’re very much at risk now,” he said.

Things will be even more difficult next September, when the school is set to lose three or four of its 78 teachers under new staffing rules announced last week.

“We’re hoping we won’t have to restrict subject choices but it’s going to be really difficult and will probably mean the numbers in some classes will be very high,” he said.

Students from poorer families who get free books under the school’s rental scheme could have to pay €40 each next year because a book grant scheme worth almost €15,000 to the school has also been withdrawn by the Department of Education.

“It’s ridiculous that they seem to think, just because we’re not in the official disadvantage scheme, that we have no disadvantaged students in the school. We’re also going to have to raise money, which will probably end up coming from parents, to provide the Leaving Certificate Applied in future,” said Mr Kinsella.

The cutbacks include axing of school funding for the programme, for students who are not suited to the traditional exams, as well as for the Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme, Junior Certificate Schools Programme and Transition Year, all of which qualify schools for extra funding.