by Eamonn MacDermott, Inishowen Independent
PARENTS of children at Scoil Colmcille National
School in Glengad have said they will fight the
plans to slash the teaching staff from five to two.
Martin McDermott, chair of the ‘Parents against DEIS
Cuts Committee’, said the Government’s plans were
‘discriminatory and unfair’ to rural schools.
He said: “We are threatened with losing two teachers
but more than this we will also lose our resource
teacher. At present we have five teachers which
entitles the school to a resource teacher for five
hours per teacher which equals 25 hours.
“When we are cut to three teachers we lose our
resource teacher as well. These cuts are being
forced through at a time when our pupil numbers are
rising from 82 to 89.
“What is so ironic is that the DEIS scheme has been
a major success as can be seen in the fact that
literacy and numeracy rates have improved
massively.”
Deputy Charlie McConalogue added: “I believe that
Minister Ruairi Quinn has treated rural schools like
Scoil Colmcille completely unfairly. The Minister
admitted he made a mistake in the Budget by cutting
staffing levels at DEIS schools across the country.
He spent weeks reviewing his mistake, but still
failed to reverse it outright.
"Instead, he made a partial reversal by allowing
some disadvantaged urban primary schools to keep
their staff.
“As it currently stands Glengad school will lose
almost 50% of its teaching staff, going from 5
classroom teachers and one resource teachers to a 3
teacher school with a part-time resource teacher.
Parents are understandably upset, as they genuinely
believed that the Government realised their mistake
and would reverse it. They made submissions to local
Government Oireachtas members in good faith, only to
result in no change in the cuts they are facing.”
Martin McDermott said: “There are 16 rural schools
in the country, including seven in Donegal, which
will be affected by these cuts.
“These schools are the only ones that were not
reviewed. All the city and town schools were
reviewed, the 16 rural ones were not.”
Calling on all the elected representatives in the
county to get behind the campaign Martin McDermott
added: “The Government reversed itself in Dublin
simply because of the pressure they came under from
TDs and senators.
“We need to make sure all our TDs, councillors and
senators get behind this campaign and tell the
Government this can’t happen. That is the only way
we will ever get anywhere with this campaign.” He
added: “We are meeting up with other schools in the
county affected by these cuts and the parents are
making it very clear that they are prepared to
fight.
“As a last resort, if these cuts don’t go away,
parents have made clear they will picket and if it
comes to it, they will refuse to send their children
to school.
“Naturally we don’t want to do this but if that is
what it takes then that is what we shall do.” |
