Sir, – Twenty-two primary principals, of the Cork City Northside Principals’ Group, wish to issue a cautious welcome to the Minister for Education’s recent announcement seeking a report on the effect the Budget will have on DEIS-designated (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) schools. We welcome the three studies published on January 13th, by the Inspectorate and the Educational Research Centre, which prove what we already know: that children are benefiting from the small class sizes, the enhanced learning support and the effective reading and maths initiatives in DEIS schools.
We see every day that the maths and reading levels of the children attending our schools are improving. Inspectors’ Whole School Evaluations and standardised tests testify to the success of our schools. We are proud of the progress we are making and the Minister for Education should be proud of it too. Ruairí Quinn should be doing everything he can to protect disadvantaged children and to ensure that the rising standards in the schools continue to rise.
This progress has been hard fought and we, as principals, are committed as a group to making sure that there are no cuts that will affect our pupils.
We urge the Government to leave children in DEIS schools alone. – Yours, etc,