THURSDAY'S NEWS
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Hard hitting report
urges investment in education services
The Board of Education (Republic of Ireland) has issued a strong
call to Government to invest in schools infrastructure.
Proposing the Board’s report, the Very Rev Desmond Harman,
Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, acknowledged the funding
recently provided for one school – Dunboyne is the first
Church of Ireland primary school to be started since the inception
of the State – but told of other schools under Protestant
management with “a general physical infrastructure which
is hindering the effectiveness of teaching”. Dean Harman
pointed out that with a growing Protestant population along the
east coast, inadequate classroom accommodation now meant an increasing
number of Protestant children could not be accommodated.
Dean Harman also highlighted inadequate provision for children
with special needs, telling Synod that, despite limitations on
resources and staffing levels in the Department, some solution
must be found that did not result in the most vulnerable children
in the system being penalised. Rev Canon John McCullagh, Education
Officer for the Church of Ireland, echoed this sentiment, saying
that every child had the right to be treated as a full member of
the community, and the Very Rev David Godfrey (Kilmore) spoke of
the frustration he had experienced at delays of up to two years
in obtaining special needs support.
Proposing the report of the Board of Education (Northern Ireland),
Mrs Helen McClenaghan told members that special needs education
in Northern Ireland was moving towards developing “learning
support centres” in mainstream schools, which was a fresh
challenge to teachers as they faced new issues of integrating pupils
using these centres. Mrs McClenaghan encouraged the Synod to support
the role of the churches in informing the ethos of schools in the
controlled sector.
Mrs McClenaghan also addressed the issue of university costs and
the difficulty of many families in meeting them. The Board, she
reported, wished to urge Government to ensure that students, particularly
those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, should neither
have to incur huge debts nor work excessive hours to support themselves
through university.
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