Minister for Education & Skills Ruairí Quinn challenged teachers to come up with ideas to make savings within the total DES budget. Speaking on the Last Word with Matt Cooper, Quinn hinted that his department colleagues are coming up with some savings ideas but he urged teachers, who work within the system, to offer their advice. He declared that, to date, both unions and individual teachers were not willing to engage in a discussion on possible savings. There was a great reaction to the interview with loads of suggestions coming in from teachers and the general public alike. Some of those ideas included digital payslips, removing chaplins from community schools, staging oral examinations over the Easter holidays and more.
I think we can all admit that savings can be made in certain areas, thereby protecting educational services to the disadvantaged and vulnerable. So I thought it might be a good idea to use this short post to collect ideas from the online teaching community. Please leave a comment below with your idea and I will email the Minister next week with your proposals and the names of those who contributed.
In service training days to be scheduled for the last week in August before term begins.
ReplyDelete“In-service provision: In 2008, over 100,000 teaching days were devoted instead to in-service teacher training, which had to be covered by substitution arrangements. In addition, over 3,300 instances of full school closure were recorded in primary schools due to “whole staff training” days during term time. “(Bord Snip Nua report 2009)