No longer left by the wayside

PR0FILE: ANNE McCLUSKEY, PRINCIPAL OUR LADY OF THE WAYSIDE NATIONAL SCHOOL, BLUEBELL, DUBLIN: Traveller children make up 20 …

PR0FILE: ANNE McCLUSKEY, PRINCIPAL OUR LADY OF THE WAYSIDE NATIONAL SCHOOL, BLUEBELL, DUBLIN:Traveller children make up 20 per cent of the pupils in this South Dublin school, one of the most disadvantaged in the State, but its visionary principal, Anne McCluskey is well-equipped to deal with the challenges

IT IS 1962. A little girl used to watch as the other kids made their way through the school gates. She desperately wanted to join them. But she was a Traveller child and, across Ireland, Traveller children were segregated, considered lucky to receive even a substandard on-site education. One day she ran away. The teachers found her in the school lobby, kneeling in front of the statue of Mary. “Please, please, Our Lady, let me come to this school,” she whispered.

The teachers scooped her up, put her in the car, and sent her back to the halting site. So she got the message loud and clear, and grew up without receiving a proper education.

Almost 50 years after she was turned away from Our Lady of the Wayside National School in Bluebell, that little girl is now grandmother to one of its pupils.

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The State now operates a more inclusive education policy, and Travellers constitute 20 per cent of Our Lady’s pupils. They sit alongside children drawn from the local area, which borders Drimnagh, on the outskirts of south inner city Dublin.

The Department of Education considers Our Lady’s to be among the 200 most disadvantaged in the State. It opened its doors in 1961 to 600 pupils; today, it has only 110.

Bluebell consists almost entirely of local authority housing. Third-level progression rates are low; many students don’t complete the Leaving Cert. The majority of the children live in overcrowded maisonettes; many are raised by aunts or grandparents.

Anne McCluskey, principal of the Our Lady's, hopes that these extended families will turn out in force for tomorrow night's seminar by John Lonergan, former governor of Mountjoy Prison, and Emily Logan, Ombudsman for Children, entitled Quality Education - Our Hope for the Future.

The initiative, part of the school’s 50th anniversary celebrations, will also mark how much McCluskey has achieved since taking over as principal in 2007.

McCluskey is well-qualified for her post. As well as her teacher training degree from Froebel College, she holds a degree in behavioural science from Huddersfield University and a Masters in Equality Studies from UCD. Highly involved in social justice campaigns, she travelled to Nicaragua in the 1980s and witnessed efforts to make education accessible to the wider population. She worked as a teacher in Firhouse, before spending seven years as a visiting teacher for Travellers in Clondalkin.

McCluskey could have her pick of plum primary school principal jobs in the leafy suburbs but she chose what many would perceive as the more difficult route.

Recruiting and retaining the best staff, is a perennial problem for disadvantaged schools. There is a huge turnover of staff. The implications of this are often ignored, but they are enormous, says McCluskey.

“When I started in 2007, there was a significant difficulty: a real breakdown of trust between parents and the school. In other schools, parents develop a relationship with teachers over the years, often with several of their kids passing through the same class, and the general teacher cohort would be familiar to the parents. If there’s a behavioural or learning difficulty, it can be negotiated in a context of trust. When there was a high staff turnover, that didn’t happen.”

Discipline was a huge issue. Learning came a distant second. Children were refusing to read or listen to their teachers, and this was having an inevitable and predictable impact on literacy and numeracy. Turning it around was a daunting job of work.

“Parents didn’t want that environment for their children,” says McCluskey. She and her staff set about redrafting a code of behaviour and developing a literacy programme.

The Incredible Years Programme, designed to manage challenging behaviour in young children, was rolled out across the school. Every teacher was trained in how to address discipline issues. The programme places an emphasis on the positive, with good behaviour recognised and rewarded, and a move away from sanctions. There’s a clear code of behaviour which all the children, from junior infants to sixth class, fully understand.

Teaching methodologies, particularly for reading and writing, are consistent right through the child’s primary education. The reading texts have changed. It’s only been possible, says McCluskey, because of support from both parents and staff.

“From my years working as a visiting teacher for Travellers, I saw how highly motivated parents were in terms of their child’s education, but they came from a place of low self-confidence, negative experiences of the school system, and a poor standard of education themselves. Most of them were illiterate but they were determined that their children would have better opportunities.”

The school has come a long way. Interactive whiteboard technology has been rolled out to all classrooms and children are availing of excellent computer facilities. The children display a sense of pride in their school, with the achievements of “Class of the Week” on proud display in the school foyer. The grounds are well-maintained by a part-time caretaker who also works a number of voluntary hours. The school has tapped into the innovative Creativity in the Classroom programme, which uses professional artists to encourage self-expression among the children.

Attitudes to education – and in particular, literacy – are changing at the school. McCluskey and her staff have worked hard to develop relationships with parents and the local community. The hall is regularly used for knitting groups, dancing and bingo nights. A grandparents evening was attended by over 200 parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.

McCluskey is under no illusions that there are still significant hurdles to overcome, and not just at Our Lady’s. Travellers are still turned away from some schools. Only 10 per cent complete post-primary education, while just one per cent reach third level. Disadvantaged schools can’t rely on voluntary contributions from parents or monies from fund-raisers, and they have been heavily hit by budget cutbacks which targeted the free book grant and the ancillary support grant.

Traveller students are amongst the hardest hit by cutbacks, with the resource teacher for Travellers and the visiting teacher both axed.

McCluskey argues that inequality of opportunity is built in to the education system.

“There’s an ethos of individual meritocracy in the Irish education system,” she says. “It’s a feeling that the individual would have a good outcome on the basis on their own merit, and that was used to camouflage all the inequalities in the system. There is a huge, unacknowledged, unspoken inequality at its core. It is fundamental to the flaws in the education system. There is a different type of education offered to different sectors, and it is skewed in such a way as to reward particular groups.

“There’s a ghettoisation in schools. If, for example, a school has an emphasis on homework and outcomes from homework, who does that benefit? It benefits the children who have two parents at home, space in their house, good jobs and incomes, who can sit down around the table and help the child with their homework. It doesn’t benefit the Traveller child who is in a mobile home with other children, who might not have an adult who is confident and has the time to sit down and work with them. It’s asking too much, and it’s just one simple example.”

The seminar Quality Education – Our Hope for the Future, will be held tomorrow, 7pm, at Our Lady of the Wayside National School, Dublin 12. Parents, teachers and members of the public are welcome. Speakers include former prison governor John Lonergan and Emily Logan, Ombudsman for Children