A chara, – The general secretary of the INTO rightly rails against the number of primary school classrooms in the country with more than 30 pupils (“Sinn Féin criticises ‘crying shame’ of primary school class sizes”, News, August 6th). This number of 30 hides other problems.
I know of one multi-grade primary class of 29 that has three different classes, including a child with severe medical needs and a traumataised student recently arrived from a war-stricken land.
That is the reality of the mix that exists in many of our classrooms.
The majority of our primary schools are small, with mixed, multi-grade classes.
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It is time now that we phased out altogether the notion of the multi-grade classroom in our primary schools.
Can you imagine the rich curriculum that could be offered to children if every classroom in the country had only one single class? – Is mise,
COLIN QUIGLEY,
Átha Troim,
Co na Mí.