Education Minister agrees to meet on rural schools

During a teachers’ conference in Galway this week, Education Minister Joe McHugh agreed to hold a symposium this summer to review issues that are hampering smaller rural schools.

Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) president Joe Killeen – a teaching principal in Lough Cutra in Gort – said decreasing the pupil teacher ratio and increasing the capitation grant would particularly aid Galway’s many rural schools.

While both were referred to by Minister McHugh during his speech to teachers at the Galmont Hotel, the union would continue to make these priorities.

“I asked him to address the fact that you have more children per teacher in a smaller school than in a bigger school. We have to have more teachers to remove that divide and the only way we can do that is reduce the pupil/teacher ratio from 26:1 closer to the European average of 20:1,” Mr Killeen told the Connacht Tribune.

“At the minute the funding capitation is €1 per day per child that has to cover all the costs of the school – it was increased by 5% in the last budget but was cut by 15% in the past – we’re asking for that 10% to be put back.”

He said another key issue was an increase in funding for services in smaller schools – PE halls in rural schools remained a rarity while teaching aids such as interactive white boards were also beyond the reach of small facilities.

Teaching principals in the smaller schools were being overloaded by an avalanche of changes and paperwork, yet were not being given their one day per week for administration duties.

“Principals are finding it difficult to teach a class and put in place all the changes – the GDPR, child protection guideline requirements, the revised English language programme and the new financial requirements for schools to be fully tax compliant. These are among the issues that will be discussed at the symposium announced by the Minister hopefully this summer.”

In his speech, Minister McHugh acknowledged there was “unfinished business” and issues of “outstanding concern” that needed to be addressed around pay equality. Teachers who qualified between 2011 and 2014 continue to be paid less than their colleagues as a result of the public service pay agreement.

Mr McHugh said these issues would be given “full consideration” in either an upcoming pay review or in the new round of pay talks due to start next year.

Mr Killeen said that pay inequality had sent a generation of teachers abroad to Dubai and China and it was only be removing it that more teachers would be recruited.

A survey by the Catholic Primary School Managers’ Association (CPSMA) last year found that the State was meeting only 53pc of the running costs of a primary school and that more than €46m a year was being contributed by parents or through other fundraising initiatives.