Cutbacks will worsen drop-out figures

(02 Jun 2009)
In wishing students well in this year’s State Examinations, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) today warned that fewer students from disadvantaged communities will stay to complete the Leaving Certificate in coming years due to a range of cuts which target the most vulnerable.

The union encourages all young people to stay and realise their potential, and appeals for the provision of a high quality education for all children.

Speaking today, TUI President Don Ryan said:

 “We wish the very best to all students taking examinations this year.  Candidates will have worked hard and will find that they are better pepared than they think in most cases. We hope they find the experience a rewarding one.

However, it is important to highlight that 20% of those who started out in second level education with this year’s candidates will not be sitting the Leaving Cerificate examinations. Now more than ever, we need to bolster and support appropriate alternative programmes that cater for the needs of all learners, and not just those more suited to the traditional courses.

However, with the various education cutbacks becoming effective at the start of the next school year, schools will be under more strain than ever with larger classes, less support for vulnerable students through cuts to or abolition of special programmes and grants and the removal of funding for alternative programmes such as the Leaving Certificate Applied (LCA) and Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme (LCVP).

These courses are key to both academic and vocational success, leading to progression in apprenticeships and other third level and further education courses. They are vital to both the personal development of the student and the ecomomic wellbeing of the country.

Going forward, it is inevitable that cutbacks will worsen the national drop-out rate of 20%.

The recent axing of the ESRI’s School Leavers’ Survey (SLS) will also have a massive impact as its absence will leave an information deficit on the progress and fate of these marginalised young people, who will then in every sense become ‘the disappeared’ of Irish education.

We acknowledge the strain that our economy is under at the moment, but failure to provide a quality education for all children of the nation will only result in huge social problems and undo our ambitions of developing a modern knowledge based economy. “