Parents keep kids at home as row over merged classes simmers

Galway City Tribune – Parents at Scoil Bhríde in Menlo withheld their children from school on Thursday following the breakdown of an agreement aimed at preventing a class of 41 pupils being taught in the same classroom by just one teacher.

The increasingly bitter dispute involving parents, the school’s Board of Management, the Principal and the Department of Education, came to a head again on Thursday morning when parents brought their children home from the school gates.

Parents are adamant that they will not agree to an arrangement involving the merger of 5th and 6th classes into one class – and one classroom – with 41 pupils, for ‘the two most important years’ of their children’s primary education.

According to parents contacted by the Galway City Tribune, they were assured following meetings with a representative of the school’s patron (Bishop Brendan Kelly) in early August, that a satisfactory resolution to the situation had been reached.

This would have involved the use of support teachers and extra resource hours to ‘fill the gap’ and enable the splitting of the 5th and 6th classes into their own groups with separate classrooms.

However, the Galway City Tribune has learned that this ‘proposed resolution’ which was considered by the Principal, Máire de Brún, and by the School Inspectorate (representing the Dept of Education), did not conform with specific Department rules and guidelines.

Parents said that in the past, this same group of pupils had been grouped together by merging 3rd and 4th classes which they added had been a completely unsatisfactory arrangement in terms of overcrowding and teaching arrangements.
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