School funding - Hanafin plan highlights problems

It was ironic that on the day that Education Minister Mary Hanafin announced a €40 million annual social inclusion — or equality — plan, young children were withdrawn from one school condemned in a Health and Safety report last year.

The minister’s initiative is commendable, as it will deliver 300 additional jobs in 600 primary and 150 second level schools under the DEIS programme, Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools.

More importantly, it will focus on early intervention for childhood education, especially for literacy and numeracy in disadvantaged urban primary schools.

That intervention is aimed at preventing problems becoming entrenched as the young people advance to second level. At that level, there will be extra funding and wider access to alternative curricula.

Altogether, it should prove a very valuable mechanism for addressing fundamental problems in disadvantaged areas, but another side of disadvantage was highlighted in Gaelscoil na Cruaiche yesterday.

The 185 pupils in the Westport school abandoned their leaky pre-fabs for lessons in the town centre because of broken general election promises of a new school. Both extremes point to the problems that exist in our educational system.