Dear Editor,

Mr Tony Downes in your Opinion column (December 5th, 1995) criticised me for opinions I had expressed in relation to the current Minister for Education's policies and attitude to the long term unemployed.

I referred to her cutback in the proposed number of places for such students in the Vocational Training and Opportunities Scheme. I laid particular emphasis on her continued refusal to allow the long term unemployed student generate school "points" in the same way as other students in his/her school. Such "points" represent the mechanism established by the Department of Education for calculating the staffing entitlements of individual schools. To deprive a school of this entitlement is to deprive its students.

I do not know what point

Mr Downes had to make beyond his rather emotional attack on long established union policy. Revealingly, it contains no condemnation of or even reference to the Minister's disgraceful reduction of 1,000 proposed places for the long term unemployed.

The long term unemployed are entitled to the best professional service available, including committed, fully qualified teachers, with proper conditions, plus the best equipped schools and colleges available. Mr Downes will be more aware of this than anyone.

In the opinion of many adult education teachers in Pearse College and elsewhere, Mr Downes's views as expressed in your Opinion column are ill informed and offensive and do little to help the cause of the continually under resourced education sector.

Yours,

Guidance counsellor,

Pearse College,

Dublin 12.