Clare schools to lose 16 teaching posts

THE Teacher’s Union of Ireland has estimated that approximately 16 full-time teaching posts will be lost in Clare from next September. They claim this is largely as a result of changes to guidance counselling provision, introduced in the last budget.
Speaking to The Clare Champion during the week, Bernie Ruane, president of the union and a teacher at St Patrick’s Comprehensive in Shannon, outlined how the calculation was made.
“What we have made it out from is the overall number of teachers allocated for the county. Based on that, because of the recent budget cutbacks, cuts on guidance counsellors, language resource cuts and cuts in learning resource, when you take the overall and calculate it with the number of people teaching, we would say that 16 posts will probably be lost.”
She said  younger teachers on short-term contracts are likely to lose out.
“Every student that has a guidance counsellor has to bring them into their allocation. What will happen is they will push schools above the quota and a lot of the guidance counsellors have a second subject and are permanent teachers so what will happen is it will not be the guidance counsellor who will be let go but a younger teacher who is a fixed-term worker.
“The school may not lose its guidance provision but it could lose some of it. The guidance counsellor could be put on the timetable to teach their second subject and they would then not have work for some fixed-term worker and it could mean subjects could be lost.”
Ms Ruane said people may be under the impression that guidance counsellors are all that is being lost from schools but that is not the case.
“It isn’t about guidance counselling and that getting lost. There’ll be less guidance but the real effect will be on career options. Schools will not be able to offer the same number of subjects at senior cycle. Previously they might have been able to offer Leaving Cert students two science subjects at higher level but that might no longer be the case.
“Smaller second-level schools may have to put ordinary level and higher-level students in one class. That doesn’t benefit the higher-level student because they’re not pushed enough and it doesn’t benefit the ordinary-level student because they may need that bit of extra time.”
She said other countries that have successfully emerged from recession have sheltered education from cutbacks and she said reducing investment in the sector would be self-defeating. “It’s like cutting a young tree and yet expecting to produce a forest,” she concluded.