Smart approach helps kids who are struggling at school

Date Published: {J}

Does homework have to end in tears? Does your child have dyslexia or are you concerned about your child’s reading or if he or she is ready for school?

These are some of the questions that one Galway based Education Centre can answer, thanks to one woman’s decision to provide a service privately that should be freely available in the State education system.

Frustration with the education system and lack of resources for special needs education led to Mary O’Dowd leaving a profession that she not only loved but that she believed she had a vocation for.

But public education’s loss in Dublin, where she taught, has become the gain of private enterprise and families who wish to pay for extra tuition for their children.

Four years ago Mary, a Longford woman living and working in Dublin, decided to branch out on her own by setting up Smart Education.

This was geared at pupils who needed extra after-school tuition and though Mary saw a huge demand for it when publicly funded schools couldn’t cater for them, she was still surprised at the demand for the service.

“I never looked back really. I had asked for a jobshare so I could ease into it but my request was refused. From the day I opened up, I noticed a huge demand for the service, because they weren’t getting it in schools.

“I love teaching but I got frustrated when I saw that some children were being overlooked because schools didn’t have the resources to address everyone they should.

“You could say I was forced into a situation where I had to go for it but I am certainly not sorry I did,” she says.

Of course, Mary wasn’t to know when she set up her business four years ago that two years later her husband, who works for a bank, would be transferred to Galway and that consequently her business would have to move, lock, stock and barrel.

But she didn’t mind and luckily their best friends lived in Oughterard so they knew straight away that they would be settling west of Galway City. The couple, with their three children now live in Roscahill and the Smart Education Learning Centre is based in Moycullen village.

Galway parents and their children started coming to her in droves because the education system nationally is under-funded and under-resourced, so that pupils with any particular educational need are left to their own devices.

“I taught in a part of Dublin where literacy rates were very low, where there were many children with special needs, where some of them couldn’t read and didn’t have the skills to cope with study or homework,” Mary explains.

“I saw the way some children were under the radar in busy schools when they should have been getting extra help. It was so frustrating to see that the schools couldn’t provide for these pupils because I realised that with a little extra tuition and attention, most of these pupils would flourish.”

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.