TRALEE: Cutbacks in Education Are Hitting Tralee

kerry | education | press release Sunday February 08, 2009 20:02 by peopleB4profit tralee - People Before Profit Alliance earthsoulrocknroll at gmail dot com

People Before Profit candidate supports local demands for their reversal.

The government’s cutbacks in education will have a drastic effect on Primary schools in Tralee. People Before Profit support local demands for their reversal.

Scoil Eoin, which will have over 600 students next year, will lose one teacher as a direct result of the increase in class sizes and will face cutbacks in language support staff which will have a severe impact on students for whom English is not their first language. In addition three quarters of its students are studying in prefabs and in a building dating back to 1858! They are still waiting for a new school.

Scoil Eoin's Principal, Kieran O’Toole, tells us that for decades “almost a complete new school has been promised, and nothing has happened”. There is a massive number of out of work construction workers in Tralee at the moment who could be usefully employed in such school building programmes. Kieran is so angry that he has joined the campaign by the National Parents Council in an attempt to reverse the government’s education policy. Thousands of postcards will be sent to parents across the country as part of this campaign.

People Before Profit Alliance local election candidate Sean Moraghan is demanding a reversal of the cuts which will include an increase in primary school class sizes from twenty seven children per class to twenty eight, which would abolish Substitute cover for teachers and would have cut teacher numbers by at least a thousand. We oppose the cuts in the provision of English Language support teachers, the cuts to funding to Special Needs children and the cut in Traveller education funding. We reject the increase in School Transport charges and the elimination of the excellent Free Book Scheme.
 
Said Sean, “These cuts in resources for primary school education represent an extremely short-sighted policy on the part of the Fianna Fail/Green government and will have a poor effect on the future skills-base of our local workforce with dire consequences for our economy here.”

“In fact, we need increased investment in our schools, especially if we are to create the so-called Knowledge Economy: We need science labs in schools and computers for every class room (and not funded through collecting huge numbers of vouchers in supermarkets).”

They say Cutbacks? We say Fight-Back!