‘It’s awful having to leave two of them go next September’

CHILDREN at St Mary’s National School in Killenaule, Co Tipperary, will lose two of their current teachers next summer because of the Government’s budget move to increase class sizes.

With 178 pupils on the roll book, it will be one child short of the 179 needed next year to keep its seven mainstream teachers, and will lose one teacher as a result.

The numbers required to sanction a non-teaching principal is also going up one to 179, so Maria McGrath will have to leave the principal’s office to go back to the classroom. She will therefore have to replace another existing teacher, as she will account for one of the six teachers left at the school.