INTO conference: A new €40 million package to combat educational disadvantage which will provide 300 new posts and paid sabbaticals for teachers has been announced by Minister for Education Mary Hanafin.
The initiative comes amid growing evidence of a literacy and numeracy crisis in schools in poorer areas.
The Minister has also promised to give details next month of a new framework which would deliver a more streamlined and integrated approach to disadvantage. An evaluation by her department had concluded, she said, that the various programmes on disadvantage, numbering 10 or more, needed to be rationalised.
The main features of the new package include:
300 new posts. These will be mostly teachers but will also include pre-school support and the recruitment of more home school liaison officers.
Paid sabbaticals for teachers working in poorer areas. This is designed to counter the problems these schools are having in recruiting and retaining teachers.
The appointment of administrative principals with no teaching duties in poorer areas. This will allow principals to focus on managing and leading schools.
Ms Hanafin promised that the new framework would provide better identification of levels of disadvantage. It would also provide a single integrated programme of supports.
Reports by the department have concluded that the efforts to combat disadvantage are not working. The most recent survey of 12 disadvantaged schools found that more than 50 per cent of pupils in some schools had severe literacy and numeracy difficulties.
The Minister said: "A crucial aspect of the new approach will be a more developed planning process, more target-setting and improved procedures for measuring progress and outcomes at local and national level."
Some of the new posts would be used to provide smaller classes in targeted disadvantaged schools. The INTO general secretary, John Carr, gave a cautious welcome to the plans, but said his union would be seeking more details.
In other areas, Ms Hanafin said she would be instructing school boards of management to end the recruitment of unqualified teachers from next September. The INTO says there are 450 such teachers within the system.
Ms Hanafin said that, while the use of such teachers was understandable when there were few teaching graduates, it no longer made sense at a time when teacher supply was not a problem.
Mr Carr said: "A fully trained and qualified primary teacher is not a luxury or an optional extra in the education system. Quality primary education is a basic entitlement, an opportunity that comes but once to a child."
Delegates voted in favour of a motion which called on the union to cease co-operation with any appointment of unqualified personnel for a period of 18 weeks or longer. This came after some delegates, many from isolated rural schools, advised caution about an outright ban.
