UNIONS
The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) said the increases in the pupil teacher ratio at second level announced in the Budget constituted a vote of no confidence in our young people.

The pupil teacher ratio is to go up by one in both primary and secondary schools and by two in fee-paying schools.

“Despite assurances by the Government that it would not hit frontline services in education and the promise in its “Programme for Government” to address class size at second-level, this Budget does the opposite,” ASTI general secretary John White said.

“Cutting pupil-teacher ratio will mean less subject choice for students, reduced focus on Science and maths education, and classes of 30 ... will become commonplace. This is simply indefensible...”

Mr White said innumerable calls were coming in from principals who feared that the level of service in their schools would shrink to that offered in the fifties.

If the cuts go ahead, schools will have to operate with 1,000 less classroom teachers, he said. For example, a school in Ennis will lose five teachers, a school in Clonmel will lose three teachers, a community school in Dublin will lose three teachers.

The removal of substitution cover for teachers taking games such as soccer, hurling, rugby and camogie will mean the gradual decline of these sports in schools, he said.  Principals are saying that pupils will have to be sent home unless these proposals are revised. 

Cutting education spending will only serve to prolong the current recession, White warned. The increase of 2.7% in current spending for education will not address the fact that Ireland comes 27th out of 29 OECD countries in terms of the amount of GDP per capita invested in each second-level student, he said.

In co-operation with the Post-Primary Education Forum, the ASTI is to hold meetings of parents, teachers and school managers in every second-level school in the country. At these meetings, invited politicians will be told of the effect of the cutbacks on each school.

The ASTI will also be preparing a legal challenge to the removal of the agreement on early retirement. Also, the three teacher unions have sought an emergency meeting of the Teachers’ Conciliation Council.

The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) has launched a national protest against the “savage cuts”. In the coming weeks, a letter will be sent to the parents of the 500,000 primary school children explaining the impact of the cuts.

General Secretary John Carr described the budget as “an attack on young children”, and warned of war over the measures contained in it. Brian Lenihan's Budget was the "most callous, savage attack ever undertaken against primary school children", he said. Up to now, the details had been hidden by the debate on medical cards and the 1% levy, he added.

"These cuts will tear Fianna Fáil apart at local level, and parents, teachers, management will be going to war on this issue," Mr Carr said.

It was unacceptable that young children were being sacrificed to bail out the economy, following the damage done by bankers and big business, he said.

He also said the Minister for Education, Batt O'Keeffe, should be at home, "fighting for his own children", rather than going on a trade mission to China. He issued a public challenge to the minister to “come out of hiding and debate the issues in public”.

The Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) has calculated the scale of the losses facing individual schools.

It claims that, for example, one 480-pupil school in west Dublin will lose more than one teacher, four language support teachers, €22,180 in cash and its library grant. A school in Dublin's northeastern commuter belt will lose at least one teacher, four language support teachers and €19,715 cash as well as its library grant.

TUI general secretary Peter McMenamin said that government claims that cuts would affect only 200 jobs at second level is "simply untrue".

"More than 1,200 jobs will be targeted by the Budget cutbacks," McMenamin said.

As well as cutting the library grant, funding for school books in disadvantaged schools will be more than halved, with €7.5m taken off its budget, he said.

The TUI will "vigorously fight these shameful cutbacks", McMenamin said, adding that closer co-operation between teacher unions would give a 55,000-strong force united in opposition.

Last week, the TUI agreed in principle to a union federation between the four teacher unions.

The Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) said it was dismayed by the budget measures at third level. The union’s general secretary Mike Jennings said they revealed the Minister's lack of empathy with the sector.

"The anticipated massive increase in third-level registration fees, elimination of child benefit for students over 18 – and the abolition of the early childhood development centre and education disadvantage committee - all point to a serious decline in educational opportunity for the disadvantaged sectors of society," Mr Jennings said.

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) has described Budget 2009 as a backward step for third level education in this country, claiming that the 67% increase in registration fees is an attempt by Minister O’ Keeffe to bring in fees through the back door and avoid any public debate on the topic.

It represents a cynical move to use students and their families as a means of plugging the gaps left by a decade of under-investment in the third level sector, the union says.

“Today's increase in the registration fee is only going to heap further financial pressure on families already struggling with the cost of higher education," USI President Shane Kelly said.

"This latest increase demonstrates that Minister O’ Keeffe has no ... intention of fulfilling the Department of Education’s commitments on grant reforms or any intention of creating more extensive financial support systems for third level students.

"Today’s announcement shows that he is not interested in making sure that everyone with the potential to go to college can fulfil that potential.  

"Surely the only barometer for students accessing third level education is their own ability and potential?

"By increasing this financial barrier to education, the Minister is preventing the best and brightest of our country from achieving their full potential,” Mr Kelly said. 

POST-PRIMARY EDUCATION FORUM
The Post-Primary Education Forum (PPEF), made up of representatives from the National Parents’ Council Post Primary, Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools, Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, Irish Vocational Education Association, Joint Managerial Body, and the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, issued the following statement to express its shock at the measures announced in Budget 2009:

Pupil-teacher ratio
The increase in the pupil-teacher ratio will have the effect of increasing class size and of reducing subject choice in second-level schools in Ireland. In the recent OECD report 'Education at a Glance 2008', Ireland's second-level pupil teacher ratio was only better than 7 countries out of 30 measured. To put us further down this particular league table is foolhardy and endangers our ability to produce rounded and well-educated young people.

Disadvantaged
Several measures, far from protecting the disadvantaged, specifically target some of the most marginalised groups in Irish society for cutbacks.  These include:

• The reduction by €2 million in the capitation fund for Traveller education;
• The reduction of 500 student places in the Back to Education initiative;
• The re-imposition on the ceiling on the number of language support teachers per school;
• The abolition of grants towards the Junior Certificate Schools Programme, Leaving Certificate Applied, LCVP and Transition Year programmes;
• The restriction of the aid for school books to DEIS schools. Disadvantage can and does occur in a dispersed manner and this measure is punishing those disadvantaged students in schools that are not within the current scheme for disadvantage (DEIS);
• The withdrawal of capitation top-ups and teachers from non-DEIS schools is another measure which will affect the most vulnerable students in our schools.

Further unfavourable measures

• The abolition of grants towards Choirs and Orchestras, Home Economics and Physics and Chemistry will further reduce the diversity of the Irish education system, a diversity which has contributed greatly to the creation of an adaptable workforce, which in turn is necessary for the renewal of economic prosperity.
• The changes to the supervision and substitution scheme are going to lead to chaos in many schools throughout the country.
• The abolition of the early retirement scheme for teachers is short-sighted. The scheme is of great benefit to schools and costs the exchequer very little.

The importance of education to our past and our future economic well-being has been emphasised again and again; not only by the partners in the education system but by economists, politicians and business leaders. 

OECD reports in recent years have emphasised the fact that “spending” on education is in fact “investment” in education and they have provided clear and compelling analysis of the public and private rates of return from education. 

They have also emphasised that the returns from education cannot only be measured in economic terms, pointing out that better educated citizens are not only wealthier but they are healthier, they spend more and they contribute more to society. 

It is very foolish of the government at this point, where education can be a major influence on the success and the rapidity of our economic recovery, to cut now and pay later.”

National Association of Principals and Deputies (NAPD)
At the NAPD annual conference in Kilkenny, President Áine Ó Neill addressed Minister Batt O'Keeffe as follows:

Minister, there is so much I could say… but I will focus on just 3 issues:

1. Pupil teacher ratio 
   It is a mystery to us, Minister, how you can claim that only 200 teachers will be lost to second level education. An average school of 500 pupils has a basic allocation of 27.8 teachers at 18 to 1. At 19 to  1, that school will have an allocation of 26.3 teachers a loss of one and a half teachers. Bigger schools will lose more, smaller will lose less but as there are 714 second level schools, the loss will be nearly 1000 teachers.
   
   Classes will be bigger, subject options lost. One teacher equals 33 class periods so my school, for example, will not offer Chemistry, Physics, Design and Computer Graphics or foundation level maths to Leaving Certs next year because less than 12 students will want each of those subjects. And that only cuts 20 teaching periods off my timetable. I don’t know yet where I will find the rest of it.
   
   And the teachers to go will be the recently recruited. Young teachers who invigorate and enthuse us all when they join the staff; who take on the co-curricular and extra curricular activities which are an intrinsic part of a well rounded education. Are you trying to turn us into glorified grind schools, as one colleague put it last night?
   
2. S & S
   The changes to S & S cover will radically impact on teaching as well as the co-curricular and extra curricular activity. My geography teacher arranges the compulsory field trip for Leaving Cert for the 3rd Monday in October next year. There are 22 in the class but 60 sixth years overall, so the rest will have class as usual. No free teachers then to take her classes so you say use S & S. What do I do if a colleague rings in sick on that Monday - cancel the field trip?
   
   For health and safety reasons alone Minister this will be impossible to implement. Students must be supervised.
   
3. Grants/subsidies
   The most appalling cuts are those which attack and undermine our most vulnerable students. You are saving a paltry €2 million by denying traveller students supports and by assuming there are no needy children in any school except the 140 or so DEIS schools. As a result of this budget there will be increased need in all schools.
   
   Another €3 million is saved by ending the supporting grants to TY, LCA, LCVP and JCSP. These last three are programmes which are availed of by students who would be most likely to drop out of school. Is that what you want? Fewer students continuing at second level?

Shame on you Minister!

MANAGEMENT
Ferdia Kelly, general secretary of the Joint Managerial Body (JMB), which represents a majority of second-level schools, said there was now the prospect of "serious disruption to the teaching and learning  process in schools in January''.

Scores of school principals had contacted school management groups to register their alarm over the Budget changes in substitution cover.

From next January, school principals will be able to employ a substitute only when a teacher provides a medical certificate. Until now, teachers could have three days' uncertified leave with a substitute teacher  provided.

The Budget measures also preclude substitution cover for teachers on official school business. Mr Kelly said this would lead to a serious reduction in co-curricular activities.

"No teacher will be available to replace a colleague taking groups of students out to matches, field trips and so on,'' he said.

The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin Most Rev John Neill accused Minister Batt O'Keeffe of striking "directly at the disadvantaged" by removing the block grant and ancillary funding to Protestant schools.

"The Minister's department is well aware that the Protestant block grant and the ancillary funding has allowed our schools to provide for significant numbers of pupils from families in economic difficulties, including those on the minimum wage or in receipt of social welfare," he said.

"The so-called 'anomalous situation' was introduced by one of his predecessors in recognition that the small number of Protestant secondary schools existed to provide not only for a scattered community, but also for those for whom the State could not provide 'free schooling' within the ethos of their own churches."

Rev Neill said the Minister's decision would "damage the delivery of education to the children of the Church of Ireland and other Protestant communities".

Frances Hill, principal of King's Hospital secondary school in Dublin, said the proposed withdrawal of support services constituted "a major threat to the very existence of some of our schools".

She said Budget provisions were in breach of the 1966 agreement between the State and Protestant fee-paying schools. The
pupil-teacher ratio at fee-paying secondary schools is to be raised by two to 20:1.

It was "totally unacceptable that these unilateral changes can be made and it requires an urgent response from our church at the
highest level".

Rev Norman Gamble, rector of Malahide, criticised "the immoral behaviour of our public representatives" when it came to breaking promises "about our schools".

HIGHER EDUCATION
The Institutes of Technology have warned that the student service fee increase will torpedo the government target for third level participation.

In a statement issued on October 14, the institutes pointed out that as recently as July the Government said it wanted to increase the participation rate from 55% to 72%. The service fee increase to €1,500 will make this target unattainable, discouraging the very people the state most wants to participate in higher education.

Investment in the infrastructure of education and research cannot be seen as an easy option for indiscriminate cuts, the statement continues. Decisions must take account of their impact on capacity to deal with the fall-out from an economic downturn in a strategic rather than ad-hoc way.

Many more students in Institutes rely on grants than in the total third-level sector and difficulties are already arising this year with inability to pay.

"As workers are laid off and unemployment increases - as the Minister confirmed in his speech - there is an even greater need for increased participation by all ages in education and accessible, flexible means of up-skilling and retraining, said Marion Coy, Chair of the Institutes of Technology Ireland (IOTI) and President of Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT).  

"The Institutes of Technology are a key resource in helping deal with current economic difficulties. Spending needs to be targeted so those from disadvantaged backgrounds continue to come to Institutes and acquire the knowledge and skills to help Ireland compete in the global economy”.

Meanwhile HETAC, the Higher Education and Training Awards Council, has welcomed the budget announcement that the agencies working in quality assurance in education and training are to be merged.

The government has decided that the functions of HETAC, FETAC (Further Education and Training Awards Council), the National Qualifications Authority of Ireland, and the external review of quality in Irish universities (currently carried out by the Irish Universities Quality Board and the Higher Education Authority) will be carried out in the future by a single agency.

Gearóid Ó Conluain, the Chief Executive of HETAC, observed that this step implements a recommendation of the 2006 OECD review of Irish higher education that there should be a common quality assurance mechanism.

"The new arrangements will provide for a more integrated and cohesive approach to quality assurance in our entire higher education system, nationally and internationally", he said, "and the inclusion of further education and training in the new body will further unify and consolidate the national approach to quality and qualifications in all of education and training outside the school system."

HETAC has worked closely with the other bodies concerned since it was established in 2001. While the detailed arrangements have still to be worked out and legislation drafted for consideration by the Oireachtas, HETAC looks forward to responding with enthusiasm to the challenges posed by the merger. (Sources: Irish Times, Irish Independent, Irish Examiner and others)