Frustrated principal quits over school cuts

Date Published: 27-Jun-2012

A campaigning County Galway School principal has resigned her position in the light of continued cuts to the primary school system which she claimed would lead to “the destruction of small schools”.

Liz Mulry has been principal at Eglish National School near Ahascragh for the past five years but steps down from that position at the end of August, and said she was looking forward to “getting her life back and not having to fight anymore.”

She was to the fore in campaigning against recent school cuts but in a statement this week said that the campaign had “fizzled out due to apathy, indifference and hostility.”

The Eglish school principal said she had

spent five years fighting for basics which every pupil should be automatically entitled to, and she believed that every principal of a small school in Ireland was now facing an uphill struggle for survival as long as current Education Minister Ruairi Quinn was in charge.

“It will be a battle to keep going, and they will have to fight for everything. It is a pity that the excellent work in these schools is not acknowledged,” she added.

Having spent two years fighting for a new school and equipment to replace the old dilapidated and dangerous building, she said that there followed a constant battle to maintain resource hours and assistants for special needs children, as well as other resources for individual pupils.

Capitation grants were cut twice, and other grants and supports withdrawn before the pupil/teacher ratio for small schools was increased by seven in the last budget, a move that would result in the loss of a teacher at Eglish next June.

It was at that stage that Liz Mulry began writing to Minster Quinn, pointing out that if he continued “on this road to the destruction of small schools,” she would not stay on as a school principal to watch it happen.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.