Jennifer Horgan: Please listen to teachers and recognise their worth
Over Picture With 250,000 In More, 50,000 In Or Exceeding Classes Children Of Overcrowded Classes Primary 25 30 School Are File
Future leaders, please listen to teachers and recognise their worth — not only in words, not only in your defence against attacks by people like Michael O’Leary, but in your deeds.
Listen to them. What are they telling you? They are telling you — and have been telling you for some time — that our most vulnerable children are suffering, and you are not acting.
At the start of this academic year we received the results of a Department of Education Inspectorate report on the provision of education for children with special educational needs in 17 mainstream primary schools and 12 second-level schools. The report found a significant erosion of teaching time for these children due to issues in teacher retention and recruitment.
These children are also not equally welcome across schools. Some schools have autism classrooms — others do not. Some schools have adequately trained staff and informed teaching methods — others do not. Look at schools in wealthy areas.
Too often, children with additional needs are turned away, told there is a more ‘suitable’ school for them elsewhere. The Department of Education spends huge money transporting these children out of their communities, away from friends and families.
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Too often, people don’t question why it is that their school doesn’t have a truly diverse pupil population. Are autistic children simply not born in certain areas? You must lead by example and ensure that all schools support all children. You must ensure too that schools do not keep their fiercest eye on league tables and standardised test results.
Within the mainstream, teachers are still not trained adequately to manage neurodiversity. Teachers are still not trained adequately to teach crucial subjects such as SPHE, including relationship and sex education. This subject keeps our children safe.
Train our teachers. We need to ensure that all teachers understand that a one-size-fits-all approach is a cruel and inappropriate one.
Every teacher needs to understand diversity, and that includes neurodiversity, but it goes beyond it.
At the start of this school year, close to 4,500 children were in emergency accommodation. More than 2,000 children were in international protection accommodation, and in excess of 100,000 children were on hospital waiting lists, with a fifth of them waiting over a year for treatment or assessment.
More than 250,000 primary school children are in overcrowded classes of 25 or more, with 50,000 in classes exceeding 30.
Despite these conditions, Ireland’s teachers continue to make a profound impact on their students’ lives every day. Without adequate training, facilities, and wraparound services, we are failing them, and we are failing the children in their care.
The underfunding of schools must stop. Capitation grants and ancillary grants do not stretch far enough to cover basic costs. Stop telling us what you are spending. Spend exactly as much as schools need.
We are losing our teachers. Over 50% of schools in Dublin, Wicklow, and Kildare report unfilled teaching posts, and 745 unqualified personnel have been employed to cover short-term absences, 284 of whom are based in Dublin alone. These figures underscore an urgent need for effective measures to address the challenges facing Ireland’s education sector.
But it’s not just about money. Given how important the profession is, we must ensure it is a resilient and diverse one. We must reduce the time it takes to qualify to become a teacher, thereby removing the reality of it being a predominantly white, middle-class profession. We must get men into the classroom, not just management. We must remove the language barrier at primary level, making Irish a specialism so those without it, who bring other rich skills and talents, can still teach our children. We must remove the necessity for teachers to complete a religious certificate and remove faith formation from within school hours.
Perhaps the most concerning issue in education today is the absence of any education policy for children living in residential care.
Their outcomes are not being tracked. The Central Statistics Office recently published a report showing that only 40% of these children were enrolled in post-primary education in 2021/2022.
That is a shocking statistic when you consider how other schools, often the wealthiest, scramble for representation on national league tables.
Children in care are also more likely than their peers to be enrolled in special schools or to be in special classes. Without parents to advocate for them, they are being totally forgotten about.
It is your job to remember them. There are also children without school places — children learning at home with parents or grandparents, or children not learning at all.
Special schools need more support too. St Killian’s in Cork has been the subject of many newspaper headlines of late. Recently, these headlines have been celebratory — the school will indeed be included in a new pilot scheme. Closer to the ground, we hear that the promises of the first pilot are yet to be achieved. The caseload is too great, the staffing is too poor, and stakeholders continue to be ignored.
Rebecca O’Riordan, a parent and advocate, shares that, as of this February, there were only 9.8 whole-time positions for a caseload that consisted of 570 children, 396 from the local area.
Something is desperately wrong with how Ireland treats its most vulnerable children.
Simon Harris, you make promises about Ireland being the best country in which to be a child, as Enda Kenny did before you. It would be nice if the next government could match words and aspirations with real action, and with a real, genuine, down-to-earth commitment to change.