Lessons in how to juggle resources
IT’S a misty morning and as radio commentators discuss the billions of euro being repaid to bank bondholders, Mary Leahy’s junior infants are learning to draw the number 2.
“Around and back on the railroad track,” recites one of the 12 boys and girls in their second term at Dromleigh National School, Kilmichael, as she draws on the whiteboard.
As Ms Leahy commends her and asks the next pupil to have a go, she feels a tap on the side. It is one of her first class pupils, who has a problem in their workbook exercise.
Moving between groups is commonplace for Mary, but most particularly during maths and English, where the range of abilities is huge. While the youngest of her 23 pupils happen to make up just over half the overall group, she still has to meet the needs of eight senior infants and a trio of first class pupils.
The older children are adding fives by holding up their open hands.
“Five and five is 10.”
“And five is 15,” says the next child. “And five is 20,” says a third.
“Now,” says the teacher, “maybe the seniors will help out as well.”
“And five is 25,” volunteers a senior infant boy, and so on until they reach 50, when the children are asked why they are using their hands.
“Because we have five fingers,” they chime.
“Could you use your toes as well?” asks one girl.
“Yeah, ‘cause there’s five toes,” says her neighbour.
“Yes you could, but we’re not going to hold up our toes,” says Ms Leahy, keeping in a smile.
All the while, the junior infant class have been tracing over dotted 2s in their maths workbooks. The first class group sets out on some maths exercises while the senior infants lift their chairs to the front of the room, where they are invited to fill in answers to some sums on the interactive whiteboard connected to the teacher’s laptop.
Some junior infants, wrapping up their number drawing, look up in curiosity at what the bigger children are doing.
“There is a benefit to a three-class situation sometimes, as the children hear something at least twice and sometimes it doesn’t just go in one ear and out the other,” Ms Leahy says later.
However, there are also many more challenges.
“I would never come in any morning without having the whole day very well planned out in advance. It’s OK teaching older classes, because they can work independently for five or 10 minutes,” she says.
“In the country school where you have a group of two or three classes in the room, you always have three maths programmes going on, or three in English and reading, or probably more to meet the different levels of the children within each class.”
It is easier to teach the children as a single group for parts of the curriculum like oral language or social and environmental studies. However, it still means having to direct different levels of questioning to each class or set harder written exercises for the older ones.
“But you can’t do that in English or maths,” says Ms Leahy.
STAFF RESOURCES
The change in the staffing allocations for small schools that will restrict Dromleigh NS from having a fourth teacher are part of the savings Education Minister Ruairi Quinn says are forced upon him and the other ministers by our loss of economic sovereignty.
Ms Leahy’s classroom is part of a recent extension. Across the hall, in one of the original classrooms of the school, which first opened in 1840, Julie Murray normally has 31 pupils: 14 in second class, five in third and 12 in fourth.
However, even on a day with three children absent, the room is cramped as she squeezes between tables moving from group to group, with a special needs assistant also helping out at one of the small desks.
The late morning is also being spent on maths here, and shapes are the theme of the day for all three groups. Reading questions aloud from their maths book ties in a literacy element for the second class pupils, while the rest work on their sums.
After setting some written work for second class, Julie turns back to fourth class pupils eager to demonstrate their knowledge of parallel lines, octagons and scalene triangles. “You hear people saying that country schools have it grand because we have small classes. I know for a fact that’s not always true. It wouldn’t be seen as a big number in city schools but 14 is a lot of children for one class in a mixed-class setting.
“We have no control over the numbers. The number in each class group depends on the year.”
CHANGING NUMBERS
The evidence is clear, principal Anne Bradley says, while the school’s secretary Joan Masters minds her fifth and sixth class pupils for a few minutes.
“This is the thing about a rural parish. The numbers fluctuate enormously from year to year. So there are 14 in our second class, but only three in first class who started a year after them. We had the numbers for four class teachers two years ago but then a large sixth class left, our numbers fell and we lost a teacher.”
When Ms Bradley started teaching there in 1988, Dromleigh NS had 54 pupils and she was one of just two teachers. Since new houses were built in the area and families started arriving, the school’s numbers have been hovering around the 70s and low 80s.
A €700,000 grant was received to add two classrooms, an office and a general purposes room, which were opened in 2010.
The Department of Education is telling schools that, from later this year, they will need 83 pupils before a fourth teacher can be appointed. The number is 81 at present and it will rise to 85 pupils in September 2013, and to 86 a year later.
With 72 at Dromleigh , there is little expectation of reaching those numbers.
SUPPORT SERVICE
The fourth classroom is used by resource teacher Anne O’Dwyer, whose services are shared with two other schools, one in the parish and a base school 15km away in Macroom.
She helps three children with special needs who are assessed by the National Council for Special Education as requiring 13 hours of additional teaching every week. However, like every school in the country, the number of hours resource teaching they get has been reduced by 10% this year.
Across the hall, Linda Wiseman does 17.5 hours in Dromleigh NS a week and 7.5 hours at Tirelton National School, about 8km away and also in the Kilmichael parish.
Her work is mostly with children who need occasional help with aspects of maths or reading and writing, as identified by their class teachers or from scores in tests used to keep track of pupils’ progress.
However, she and the other teachers worry about how to find the extra time to help those pupils from next autumn.
The school is set to lose five of the hours Ms Wiseman works there each week.
“Even at the moment, it’s almost impossible some days to get around to the children who need that extra help in class, so the learning support is a huge thing for us classroom teachers,” said Ms Murray.
For Ms Wiseman, her biggest concern is about the pupils. “We have a parent-teacher meeting coming up and that’s the question that will be asked: “Will my son or daughter still be getting help next year?’ ”
While the help will still be offered, she expects she will either have to take individual children for shorter periods instead of the half-hour she normally spends with each at a time or else she might take three or four together, if they come to her in small groups.
“I’ve been here six years, I always love coming to work. And when you see test results at the end of the year and they have improved, you feel some achievement.”
POLICY FEARS
Kilmichael parish had eight primary schools in 1960 but it now has three within its rugged terrain between Macroom and Dunmanway.
Transport has become another concern this year. Like hundreds of schools which took in the pupils of some of those which closed 40 years ago, about one third of Dromleigh’s pupils are from the other end of the parish.
Their families became eligible for free school bus carriage when Toames NS closed in 1979.
However, that ended last September and the €50 fare charged for each child since last term will double to €100 next autumn.
“The situation seems to be moving towards dismantling the rural transport system altogether.
“Will the department pay for transport for children from closed schools? The answer is no,” says Ms Bradley.
While Mr Quinn insists the closure of small schools like Dromleigh is not state policy, his pronouncements have not stemmed the fears of communities like this.
“The parish of Kilmichael is a sprawling rural one. The population is also distributed over a wide area, with no significant areas of high population,” says Ms Bradley.
“This is characteristic of the West Cork countryside, which accounts for a large number of small rural schools. Surely these children are also entitled to an education in their own communiti?.”
School stats
* Opened: 1840
* Pupils: 72
* Class teachers: 3
* Average class size: 24 CLASS TEACHERS
* Mary Leahy: 23 pupils (12 junior infants, eight senior infants, three first class)
* Julie Murray: 21 pupils (14 second class, five third class, 12 fourth class)
* Anne Bradley (teaching principal): 18 pupils (nine fifth class, nine sixth class) SPECIAL NEEDS TEACHERS
* Learning support teacher: Linda Wiseman (17.5 hours a week)
* Resource teacher: Anne O’Dwyer (13 hours a week)
* Part-time secretary: Joan Masters
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