Madam, – We are writing, as a group of very concerned principals, to protest strongly at the decision of the Government to cut educational teaching supports for pupils from the Travelling community in our schools. Our concern centres on the detrimental effects that these cuts will have, not only on pupils from the Travelling community, but on every pupil in our schools.
There is a wide body of Irish educational research, the most recent being the 2009 National Assessments of Mathematics and English Reading, which documents the specific difficulties experienced by pupils from the Travelling community in the key areas of literacy and numeracy. There is an onus on the Government to ensure that these pupils retain their vital educational supports. Pupils from the Travelling community need to be given the wherewithal, not only to access the educational system, but also to achieve success within the system.
Pupils from the Travelling community are concentrated in larger numbers in schools in economically disadvantaged areas. These schools already have significant numbers of pupils requiring additional support in literacy and numeracy. The provision of a small number of additional teachers in schools with a percentage of pupils from the Travelling community, as well as measures to improve the quality of teaching and learning, ensured that these schools have made significant progress in raising overall standards. Removal of even one teacher from the support team in these schools will seriously compromise their ability to meet the individual educational needs of all vulnerable pupils at risk of failure and early school drop-out.
The Government’s decision to withdraw teaching supports, in addition to the reduction of capitation and the removal of the visiting teacher service for Travellers, represents a massive blow to the support traditionally given to one of the most vulnerable groups in our community. These measures seriously endanger the progress that has been achieved in our schools in terms of school attendance, parental involvement, transfer to second-level and community self-esteem. We urge the Government, in the strongest possible terms, to re-evaluate the impact of these decisions on all the pupils in our socially excluded communities and reverse these cuts. – Yours, etc,