Cutbacks bite as advisers sent back to classrooms
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The numbers employed in the education sector have jumped from 66,000 in 1995 to 93,500 last year -- a rise of more than 40pc.
The biggest increase has been in teachers and special needs assistants. There have been smaller increases in the number of teachers on secondment to 'support' services for schools and in other non-teaching grades.
Unions insisted that there should be no freeze on teacher numbers to meet rising pupil numbers.
But the Department of Education and Science has cut back on 'non-core' areas. Last Friday, 18 schools advisers for information and communications technology (ICT) were shocked to learn they were being recalled to their classrooms from secondment.
Support
However, it has also been learned that a dozen other teachers on secondment to second-level support service will be back in the classroom in September.
The Department says this is as a result of the natural lifecycle of support services provided by the department.
The programme of providing inservice for languages is being downsized and will be subsumed within the Second Level Support Service (SLSS).
The history and geography support programmes will be incorporated into the SLSS as will the junior science support service and the maths support service. In addition, the Primary Curriculum Support Service and the School Development Planning Service will be coordinated from September.
The managerial body for secondary schools has expressed dismay at the withdrawal of the ICT schools advisers. Ferdia Kelly, general secretary of the Joint Managerial Body, said there was a sense of frustration at the decision.
He said that if the education system was to assist young people to be computer literate, and part of that workforce, it must improve from a situation where:
l One-fifth of computers in schools are six years old.
l Eighty nine per cent of schools are without technical support and maintenance.
l Ireland lies 20th in a list of 30 OECD countries, with under one computer for every 10 students.
l Ireland ranks with the bottom five OECD countries -- the Czech Republic, Hungary, Mexico and the Slovak Republic -- where one in five pupils report no use of computers at home.
"This news just compounds the despair felt by schools already with the absence of any news on the roll out of the long-promised National Development Plan Schools ICT Strategy to the tune of €252m over seven years," Mr Kelly said.
Tim O'Meara, president of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, said that the withdrawal of this service represented another blow to the education sector.
- John Walshe Education Editor
