OPINION:Batt O'Keeffe still sports his education minister L-plate. Unfortunately, I have to live with his and the Government's mean-spirited education cutbacks, writes Veronica McDermott
I AM AN ordinary school principal. Ordinary in the sense that I shook former minister for education Mary Hanafin's hand at functions and debated her at Díospóireachtaí Ghael Linn while in college in the 1970s. As ordinary a principal as Joe Behan is a TD; and as outraged.
Delighted as I am for my mother and other over-70s that the media, the Opposition and even some of the Government are championing their cause, I am disappointed at the lack of debate on issues affecting the education of our young people.
The Budget brings an increase in the pupil-teacher ratio; it removes substitution cover for teachers absent on school business; and it reduces grants for choir, physics and chemistry, transition year, Traveller students, and so on. There has been no outcry.
It is a great privilege to work in my school. It is a vibrant, energised school community operating on most days from football at 7.45am through to basketball and supervised study ending at 6.20pm.
In between those times there might be voluntary morning prayer; Maths Week events; lunchtime concerts; justice and peace meetings; inter-school debates; student council; sixth-year leadership; visits to the Four Courts or Newgrange; outdoor pursuits to Rostrevor; the Leabhar Power Club; fundraising for seals and Sudan (separately!); and, of course, quality teaching and learning. And that was only last week.
In the evenings last week there was the parents' association agm, the board of management meeting, and a welcome Mass for first years and their parents.
When Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe talks about the cutbacks not affecting the quality, is this the quality he is talking about?
Is he aware of the volunteerism that went into last week and every week in this school and in every school - on the part of the students, teachers, parents and members of the local community? Does he not see that an increased pupil-teacher ratio will obviously affect quality teaching and learning?
Does he not realise that withdrawing substitution from school business activities affects sporting events, outreach to the elderly, inter-school competitions, and visits to museums, the courts, even the Dáil? Is this what he means by one step backward?
Has the fact that the Minister for Education is still wearing his L-plate militated against our schools in Budget 2008?
I am an ordinary person blessed to work in the extraordinary environment that is a school. We have embraced whole school evaluation and school-planning and subject inspections - all of which commended the quality of our teaching and learning.
Our main support, however, does not come from the Department of Education, but rather an education office largely staffed by nuns retired from teaching and working on more of a stipend then a salary; they are invaluable to us and no cost to the department.
Our school did not rise on the high tide of the Celtic Tiger: despite overnight queues for enrolment we were not provided with an extension; our students won the under-19 All-Ireland basketball without a full-sized PE hall; we in the voluntary sector (schools under the trusteeship of religious orders) still receive less capitation per pupil than community and comprehensive schools; and in the good times there was never a reduction in the pupil-teacher ratio.
Every day in this school, we measure the quality of our work against the words of our founder, May Ward, whose 400th anniversary we will celebrate in 2009. We hope we are giving our students "roots to draw on and horizons to reach for".
We hope we are imbuing them with a sense of Loreto core values of "truth, freedom, justice, sincerity and joy". Most of all, dealing with young people, we hope. Budget 2008 has made that difficult for me. The lack of reaction to the education cutbacks has disappointed me. The prospect of what lies ahead has dispirited me. Joe Behan chose his form of protest. This article is mine.
Veronica McDermott is principal of Loreto College in Swords, Co Dublin