Cllr Richard Daly, leas Cathaoirleach of Athy Town Council is encouraging parents and teachers in the region to take a positive step to attack the savage cutbacks to their childrens education by attending the protest march in Dublin on next Sat.
“A number of teacher unions, parents associations and management bodies are uniting next Saturday to show their opposition to the cuts by coming out in numbers next Saturday in Dublin. The ASTI, National Parents’ Council Post Primary, ACCS, IVEA, JMB, and TUI are encouraging as many parents as possible to make an effort to defend their childrens rights in education by supporting next Saturday’s protest in Dublin.
I have spoken to a large number of Principals in south Kildare and some of them will be losing up to three teachers if these cuts are fully implemented. A change in pupil/teacher ratio of one unit does not mean that there will be one more student in the class, it means that the figure that you divide your student number by to calculate how many teachers are in a school is increased by one. This could mean a loss of up to 50 teachers in County Kildare alone.
Now, as we should be trying to develop a knowledge economy in preparation for an economic upturn, we should be investing heavily in education but instead we see the savage assault on its provision.”said Cllr Daly.
“Parents now need to stand up and make use of next Saturdays protest to show that they will not tolerate their children being scapegoats for financial mismanagement.” he added