Schools may lose transition year option

STUDENTS in up to half the country’s second-level schools may have no option to take transition year or alternative Leaving Certificate programmes because of Government cutbacks, a survey has found.

While the supplementary budget had no major impact on frontline school services, most of the cuts in October’s budget will take effect when children return from holidays next autumn.

The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) has published findings of detailed research with 20 schools on the impact of the cutbacks, which include an average loss of two or three teachers per school and the abolition of a range of grants.

Three-in-four schools will have to ask parents for more funding next year, although most principals say they have already had an increase in families seeking assistance, or asking for waivers from charges for exams or school activities.

“During the year a number of cheques made out to the school bounced arising from cashflow problems of parents,” the principal of one Munster school said.

Most schools will have to reduce the number of subjects Leaving Certificate students can choose because they will have fewer staff to timetable for classes. Among the more common subjects being dropped or at risk are music, technical graphics and accounting, while more than half the surveyed schools said they will have to charge students who continue physics or chemistry as an equipment grant for these subjects was one of the cuts by Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe.

But grants for programmes such as Leaving Certificate Applied, which is aimed at students not suited to the traditional exams who are usually from disadvantaged communities, is also having a major effect. This programme or transition year will be curtailed or dropped in nine of the 20 schools.

The various cutbacks will be the main topic of motions to be debated by delegates at the first day of the ASTI annual convention in Killarney on Tuesday.

“They’re not only impacting on tangible resources such as teacher numbers, funding and subject choice, they are penetrating the ethos, pastoral care and holistic nature of the education delivered by schools,” said ASTI general secretary John White.

The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) said the withdrawal of a e7.5 million book grant, which allowed schools outside the main education disadvantage scheme provide school books for less well-off students, may prove to be the cruellest cut, as teachers working in the most deprived communities will not be able to instruct courses if only a third or half the class has the relevant book.

“It’s ironic that the exact same figure as the meagre e7.5m saving has been spent in the last four years on printing and distributing Department of Education reports,” said TUI general secretary Peter MacMenamin.

The cutbacks will be among the talking points at TUI’s annual congress in Cork next week.