Disadvantaged students hit

MINISTER Ruairí Quinn announced on December 5 that “a key priority is to target available funding at schools with the most concentrated levels of educational disadvantage”.

Why, then, did he specifically target our most vulnerable DEIS Band 1 junior schools for the most savage cuts, through plans for a substantial raise to class size, while simultaneously (drastically) cutting their vital learning support services?

Budget 2012 also paradoxically states that “the schools (DEIS Band 1) should continue to prioritise their staffing allocation to implement more favourable pupil teacher ratios in junior classes, in line with DEIS policy”.

Since all of the classes in these DEIS Band 1 junior schools are junior by definition, this policy is rendered null and void by the increase in said pupil teacher ratio for all of our youngest and most vulnerable children in DEIS Band 1 junior schools.

Isn’t this a severe case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?

Máire Lineen

Dunboyne

Co Meath