Proposals will hurt teacher education

OPEN Letter to the Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn:

The education of primary school teachers is of paramount importance. In this context it is disappointing that new and highly controversial proposals from the Department of Education (Better Literacy and Numeracy for Children and Young People: A Draft National Plan to Improve Literacy and Numeracy in Schools, Nov 2010) and the Teaching Council (Policy on the Continuum of Teacher Education, June 2010 and Initial Teacher Education: Criteria and Guidelines for Programme Providers, Aug 2011) have received little attention in the public forum.

These documents, in effect, propose to eliminate the humanities from primary teacher education. If implemented, these proposals will have a detrimental impact on teacher education and will not be effective in addressing problems with literacy and numeracy at primary level.