Ratio changes threaten student guidance
Although rising pupil numbers will help to offset 750 of those jobs, two thirds of them in primary schools, the biggest impact is at second level, where teachers and school managers described the measure on guidance counsellors as a PTR rise by the back door.
Where schools are entitled to a subject teacher for every 19 pupils, with a full-time guidance counsellor also appointed for every 500 students, guidance posts must now be counted within the mainstream staffing schedule.
Education Minister Ruairi Quinn said the measure, costing 500 posts at the 740 second-level schools and saving €32 million a year, would give schools greater flexibility to decide the resources they wished to allocate for guidance and for other subject areas.
But Ferdia Kelly, general secretary of the Joint Managerial Body, which represents almost 400 secondary schools, said schools were outraged at having to choose between offering guidance or a particular subject, or a mix of both.
“The impact is on the counselling role of the guidance staff when pastoral support has been hit by the decimation of year head posts because of the moratorium on management posts,” he said.
Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) general secretary Pat King said it was absurd that when the Government said its No 1 priority was jobs the countr’'s schools would lose one or two guidance counsellors or have to reduce focus on key subjects.
The number of students needed by fee-paying secondary schools to appoint teachers will rise by one to 21, two more than in other schools, and reducing the number of their staff funded by taxpayers by 50. Mr Quinn has also ordered an analysis of fees raised by the schools to inform future policy on investment in the sector, which receives almost €100m in salary costs from his department.
The remaining posts to be withdrawn include 428 extra teachers that primary and second-level schools had kept from previous schemes to alleviate disadvantage before the existing schools support programme, introduced in 2005.
The primary school pupil teacher ratio has avoided increases, meaning feared class size increases will not take place, but savings of €15m are to be achieved over a number of years by increasing the number of pupils needed by smaller schools to appoint second, third and fourth teachers.
Mr Quinn said he did not plan to use the measure as a way of closing small rural schools, whose future was the subject of concerns due to a recent department review.
But a 2% cut in day-to-day funding for schools in 2012 and 2013, followed by 1% in cuts in 2014 and 2015, prompted the Irish Primary Principals Network to warn that indebted schools will find it even more difficult to pay bills and buy supplies as contributions from parents are plummeting.
