Failure to provide adquate language support teachers for minority ethnic students could lead to such students failing to obtain sufficient results, leading to unemployment and ghettoisation in Irish society, delegates at the TUI Annual Congress in Tralee were told today.
Marian Cox, a former chair of TUI Equality Council, expressed concern at the Fine Gael/Labour coalition's plan to press ahead with a plan drawn up by the previous government to reduce the number of language support teachers by 500 on a phased basis by 2014.
Under the plan, some 125 language support posts are due to be abolished in September and Ms Cox warned that such a move would have serious repercussions for schools and teachers working with large numbers of non-national students who may not have good English.
"The children are going to get lost and fall behind because if you have classes of 30, it's going to be much difficult for teachers to work with them –at least if they have language support, there's some chance of giving them some one to one tuition but if they are classes of 30, they will fall behind," she said.
TUI deputy general secretary, Annette Dolan said that TUI members were in
the front line of such cutbacks because minority ethnic families tended to live in local authority housing estates and their children often attended public schools such as vocational and community schools.
Delegates unanimously backed a motion from the Dublin City Post Primary branch calling on congress to direct a study be carried out of the resources needed to cater adequately for non-national students in VEC and CC schools and that a campaign be initiated to obtain these resources.