Teachers halt visits to homes of drop-outs
Teachers halt visits to homes of drop-outs
The Transforum Alley Youthreach Centre is one of over 100 providing an alternative education to 15 to 20 year-olds
The Transforum Alley Youthreach Centre is one of over 100 providing an alternative education to 15 to 20 year-olds, building up learners’ skills and knowledge base. At the time of the evaluation last May, it had 18 learners, aged between 15 and 18 years of age.
The report applauds the work done in the centre.and notes the practice of maintaining ongoing contact with parents, which had included a strong outreach policy where key workers assigned to individual pupils visited the learners’ home.
But the report stated: “This practice has been discontinued in the interest of staff safety and in response to concerns that key workers were being inappropriately implicated in non-educational matters during home visits.”
As a result, communication with parents, about matters such as attendance and behaviour, had to be conducted solely by phone and, while parents were invited to attend meetings about particular events, routine parent-teacher meetings were not convened.
Behaviour
In a response to the report, the centre said it had followedup in a number of areas which had been identified as needing attention, including developing much stronger links with families.
The report was among a batch of 52 from the inspectorate published by the department yesterday.
The Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) said the reports showed the real problems of over-crowded primary school classrooms.
In Scoil an Chroi Ro-Naofa, Castletownbere, Co Cork, the inspectors point out that “some of the classrooms are noticeably crowded particularly when pupils with special needs with additional space requirements and special needs assistants are taken into account”.
“This clearly shows that school inspectors are aware of the overcrowding problem caused by the failure to reduce class sizes,” said INTO general secretary John Carr.
A report on Scoil Naomh Fiachra, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, refers to an extension built in 2004 to accommodate an increase in enrolment.
But the report added: “The school population has again outgrown the permanent classroom accommodation and the school has acquired six prefabricated classrooms.”
The board of management sent a terse response to the inspectors’ comments about accommodation – stating that they were “well aware of the class size issue in some of our classes”.
Inspectors recommended that “consideration should be now be given to equipping individual classrooms with screens and ICT equipment, including data projectors, as resources permit”.
- Katherine Donnelly
