Independent TD for Laois-Offaly and former school principal, Carol Nolan, has appealed to the Minister for Education, Joe McHugh, to impose a moratorium on reducing the number of teachers assigned to rural schools.
Deputy Nolan was speaking after she raised the matter with the Minister during a Dáil debate on the response of the Department of Education to the Covid-19 emergency.
She said: “It has been absolutely clear for some now that rural schools are losing skilled and valuable teachers because of the guidance being issue by the department with respect to the pupil teacher ratio.
“Indeed, I know of many schools throughout the constituency of Laois-Offaly that have lost teachers simply because they were a couple of pupils short of the number required to retain the teacher.
“This will become more of a problem when the social distancing measures come into effect in our schools.
“Rural schools have already been disadvantaged for too long now and I appealed to the Minister to rectify that.”
In reply to Deputy Nolan, Minister McHugh indicated that he had an opportunity in the last budget to reduce the Pupil Teacher Ratio for one, two, three and four-teacher schools.
Nolan continued: “What he did not mention of course was that the original and highly damaging changes to the Pupil Teacher Ratio were the direct result of the policy adopted by the Fine Gael-Labour government in 2012 when it introduced changes to the staffing schedules in 1, 2, 3 and 4 teacher schools in Budget 2012.
“Rural schools cannot afford to lose teachers at this critical juncture.
“It is vital that they remain in place to meet to the challenges that are going to emerge in terms of managing the new social distancing requirements within schools,” concluded Deputy Nolan.
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