Now commonly known as the Cluster Games, principals have spent the last week scrapping for hours to make up SET clusters of 25 hours. Mostly justifying their disregard of their colleagues because they think they need to save a teacher from the dreaded safeguard of the panel, I think principals have lost their principles. When the chips are down, it’s the children who have lost out with the Department of Education cutting hours to children with complex needs. I tell my story to the Irish Examiner.
I was also busy finding out how much money the State gifts to the various religious bodies every year. It seems that makes me a bigot. I tried to explain my rationale as to why gifting €100m a year to private bodies with nothing to show for it is not a good idea, but despite my best efforts I’ve also nothing to show for it. If only my story had have been about Smartphones or voluntary contributions the media would have been all over it.
I got a glimpse into how Finnish people must feel when other countries try to analyse their education system. The Scots were salivating over our PISA scores and making all sorts of mad conclusions.
