Resources ‘swiped’ from Tuam primary school

A primary school in Galway, where 76% of its pupils face educational disadvantages, has been hit with savage cuts over the last seven years.

“We’ve 380-plus pupils, 30% foreign national, 26% Traveller, and approximately 20% who would have huge socio and economic disadvantages,” says Mary O’Mahony, a teacher in the school.

“We lost three resource teachers for Travellers and we lost two teachers for children with English as a second language, we lost the visiting teacher for Travellers and then 15% of the resource hours that were allocated are gone as well.

“For example a child who would have multiple disabilities should get five hours but 15% is knocked off that so the child only gets 4.15 hours per week. It all started from 2009 onwards from when all the cutbacks came in,” she added.

Ms O’Mahony has been teaching in the school since 1999 and was speaking yesterday on the final day of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) congress.

She says that the severe cuts to the school’s resources has affected the entire student population. “We try to help the children with most need and in some cases, because of their lack of English or because of the educational needs, we end up taking them for learning support so a lot of children in the middle, the average kids in the middle are affected.

“The cuts affected every child in the school because it meant we had less resources to go around. We just don’t have the manpower,” Ms O’Mahony said.

The diverse make-up of the school is a result of a number of factors in Tuam.

“Tuam seems to have been a town where a lot of newcomers arrived and Tuam was a town where many Travellers settled as well. Most of our Travellers would be settled Travellers, they are absolutely fabulous and come from fabulous families. Our school is a fantastic school. All of our Travellers are so well integrated into our schools and it’s just such a pity they’ve been doing so well and achieving so much in education it’s just a pity that these resources have been swiped out from under their feet,” said Ms O’Mahony. “We just hope we wouldn’t go backwards having achieved so much,” she added.