Reducing class sizes - Government has failed to deliver

It IS traditional for the three teacher’s unions — the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO), Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI), and the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) — to hold annual conferences during Easter week.

This year, the conferences have the added spice of a number of controversial issues, such as the rowing back by the Government on repeated promises to cut class sizes, in addition to the fallout from the controversy over water and refuse charges on schools, as well as serious funding problems facing lecturers at institutes of technology. The TUI had warned that industrial action is imminent, because enough money has not been allocated to meet industrial relations agreements, even those recommended by the Labour Court. The INTO will be discussing what to do about the Government reneging on its pre-election promise to cut class sizes. Current class sizes are set at one teacher for every 27 pupils.

The programme for government drawn up last summer promised to cut class sizes by one point a year over the next three years in order to reduce the average class size to 24 pupils by 2010. It now appears that they are not even going to take the first step.

Although the Government passed handsome salary increases for itself, it is reneging on its educational promises. The Department of Education contends that it does not have the money necessary to fulfil the commitment, with the result that at least 100 schools whose numbers dropped slightly last September must let one teacher go.

The intention to renege on the commitment was flagged in the budget in December. The Department of Education has already published a notice on its website that there will be no change in class sizes this year.

As Education Minister, Mary Hanafin has been impressive in making promises. She has been rich in rhetoric but poor in performance. Yet there must be collective responsibility for the overall performance in these educational matters.

The previous programme for government in 2002 promised to cut class sizes to below 20 for children under nine. Any impartial examination of its record could only conclude that the Government failed miserably at a time of unprecedented affluence.

“Fool me once, shame on you,” Eamon de Valera, the founding father of Fianna Fáil, used to say.

“Fool me twice, shame on me.”

The Government is trying to pull off the same confidence trick a second time. It is hardly fair to blame teachers, but the anger of those teachers is very understandable. It has long been recognised that the essence of teaching is good example, but there seems to be no limit to the Government’s capacity for lousy leadership on this issue.