THIS month's announcement to primary schools that class size promises in the Programme for Government will be broken comes right out of the Jo Moore book of media management.
Ms Moore, you might remember, was the spin-doctor for the British Transport Secretary, Stephen Byers, who suggested in an e-mail to colleagues that September 11th, 2001 was a good day to "bury" bad news.
During last December's Budget the Minister for Education and Science, Mary Hanafin, let it be known that Government commitments to tackle overcrowded classes would not be met this year. The news received some media coverage, but it was only one of a multitude of announcements competing for coverage at that time. If the issue wasn't exactly buried, no doubt the Minister was hoping it was receiving the last rites.
And judging by the Minister's reaction to the issue re-appearing in the media this month, she clearly believed that the ploy had worked. Last Friday a spokeswoman for the Minister for Education told The Irish Times that the decision to row back on class-size commitments had already been announced in the Budget last December. She also argued that it had been "widely publicised".
No doubt the latter comment was an attempt to persuade members of the media that the matter was not newsworthy.
But unfortunately for the Minister, it was.
Dozens of schools all over the State were contacted by the Department to tell them that they had to let a teacher go. Did the Minister really expect these schools, parents and teachers to sit quietly and accept that this had already been announced? If the Minister expected this then clearly she has no understanding of the impact of her decision on thousands of children in hundreds of classrooms.
For those who need reminding of what the impact will be, the situation faced by just one of these schools will suffice. St Peter and Paul's National School in Dublin has nine teachers and 231 pupils on the roll this year. Although this was one short of the number of pupils needed to retain the ninth teacher, the school was confident that the Government would keep its promise in the Programme for Government and that they would have retained the teacher.
From next September, according to the school principal, the school will have at least the same number of pupils but with one teacher less to teach them. Class sizes will grow, from a current average of 26 to approximately 29 pupils in every classroom. The reality is that many classes will have more than 30 children.
It's hard to see why parents and teachers, who had lobbied for an end to overcrowded classes, would take this lying down and recognise that the Minister had made an announcement before Christmas.
All politics is local and I strongly suspect that public representatives will be made well aware of that in the coming weeks. It will be one more item to add to the list of representations that they will have to make to the Minister, which already includes water-charges, autism, school buildings, computers and funding.
But the correspondence to schools on the matter reveals another way in which the Department of Education tries to keep bad news out of the public domain. I challenge non-teachers (and even teachers) to make sense of circular letter - No 10/2008. You can view it at www.education.ie.
The circular encapsulates the impact of bureaucracy and lack of joined-up Government policy on schools. It states that only pupils who were validly enrolled on September 30th, 2007 should be taken into account for the purpose of determining staff numbers. Pupils retained on the school register on September 30th, 2007 for the purpose of compliance with the Education and Welfare Act, 2000, should not be counted in determining staff numbers. So schools have to keep two sets of records.
But back to the main issue of the Government's broken promise on tackling overcrowded classes. It hasn't gone away and I don't believe that it will until it is resolved.
The Government's position is simply indefensible. If, as the Taoiseach appeared to believe last week, the economy was threatened by the global economic situation then what better place to invest for the future than in our children? On the other hand, as the Taoiseach appears to believe this week, if the economy is sound, how can such cynical betrayal of children be justified? Trying to defend the indefensible will require something a little better than a Jo Moore-like distraction.
Aidan Gaughran teaches on Clonmel,
Co Tipperary and is a member of the education committeee of the INTO
