Norma Foley has to go [MOD WARNING IN 1ST POST]

Triangle

KnocKnocKnock wrote: »

The government has already tried this. When teacher unions raised concerns about re-opening schools when we had the highest number of cases per population in the world, Foley and Madigan, and some sections of the media presented teachers as just "not cooperating" and ignoring parents and children with special educational needs.
It didn't really work because the vast majority of parents with children in mainstream and special education saw how hard their children's teachers were working to help them. It back fired when you think of how Norma did nothing to invest in special education since she became minister and Josepha implied that children with additional needs are not "normal".

That's just untrue or at the least you've misquoting. But I'm used to this on social media and forums.
The ASTI pulled out at the start when discussions were around just 6th years returning.
That's a vast difference with every student returning. But hey, speculation and hyperbole rule the story eh?


Edit: and it wasn't teacher unions, it was the ASTI.. One union
Furthermore, you'll find most parents against this belief (at least from newsalk during this idiocacy)

markodaly

iamwhoiam wrote: »

They start official primary but most European kids go to pre school and learn through play .They absolutely know how vital early years are

We should strip away the jnr/snr infant cycle from primary school and fully resource early years education, to replace it and add more years from 2 or 3 years old.

There should be 4-5 years of 'pre-school' early years education before a child even gets to 1st class of a primary school.

But, its says a lot when early years education is not even in the remit of the Dept of Education and the Unions will certainly not back any reform here, they want to feather their own nests.

KnocKnocKnock

Triangle wrote: »

That's just untrue or at the least you've misquoting. But I'm used to this on social media and forums.
The ASTI pulled out at the start when discussions were around just 6th years returning.
That's a vast difference with every student returning. But hey, speculation and hyperbole rule the story eh?


Edit: and it wasn't teacher unions, it was the ASTI.. One union
Furthermore, you'll find most parents against this belief (at least from newsalk during this idiocacy)

I don't know why you are bringing the return of 6th years into it. I was replying to a poster who said the government should try pitting parents against teachers and I said they had already tried this back in January. They tried to pit families of children with special needs against teachers.

Are you saying in your experience, most parents of special needs students said their child's teachers just didn't want to co-operate? Well that hasn't been my experience. Most parents of special needs children that I spoke to at that time said that even if schools open, they would not send their children to school anyway, as cases were so high. They were also very appreciative of all the ways the teachers were engaging their kids.

A lot of parents I know, and experiences I have read in various forums online is that school was the only support for them in terms of OT, Speech and Language Therapy, respite for the parents. Many said they felt it was unfair that the class teacher or SNA was seen as a "catch all" for all these services and it went back to what they had been highlighting for years. That in this country, you have to fight tooth and nail for services for people with special needs.

Parents, teachers and others have brought up the issue for years about services for children with special needs are chronically underfunded. As I'm sure you already know, children wait for years before even being assessed. Without these assessments they can't even get allocated hours for services or resource hours. While OT, and SLTs do their best, they can't be in two places at once and get to spend an hour a week in a school if they're lucky. Organisations that traditionally provided respite services had stopped doing so as it was "not safe" while in the same breath, lambasting unions for raising the same concerns.
Norma and the rest wanted to deflect attention from this gaping hole by pitting the public against teachers.

briangriffin

Triangle wrote: »

That's just untrue or at the least you've misquoting. But I'm used to this on social media and forums.
The ASTI pulled out at the start when discussions were around just 6th years returning.
That's a vast difference with every student returning. But hey, speculation and hyperbole rule the story eh?


Edit: and it wasn't teacher unions, it was the ASTI.. One union
Furthermore, you'll find most parents against this belief (at least from newsalk during this idiocacy)

Well no thats just not true at all.
KKK is 100% right. In January Norma Foley had planned on opening primary schools and special schools around mid late January when ireland had one of the highest rates of infection in the world. She had agreement from most teacher unions or so she said on coming back but nphet chaired an INTO webinar attended by 1000s of teachers. At a time when the new variant was rampant and when most of us now had neighbours or people we knew contracting the virus, we learned the variant was highly transmissible (where before Christmas 2 in a House of 8 might contract it now the majority were contracting it).
When asked at the webinar by teachers on numerous occasions what about the new variant what precautions are we taking against it, how are pupils and teachers going to be kept safe - all questions were completely ignored we were told the exact same precautions as before Christmas were to be employed - crack the window open and hope for the best - with 1000s of cases a day obviously there was high community transmission but normas webinar and her NPHET representatives kept the spiel schools are safe - that was the moment every teacher in this country said hang the hell on they must think we are complete idiots here and thankfully the vast majority of parents saw through the same spiel. Teachers rightly said we were not going back until it was safe to do so. MM later would say it was not safe for schools to go back as did the heads of NPHET. I wonder what state the hospitals would be in today if we had gone back in January - if Norma's i choose the special needs kids over teachers had worked she has been very quiet since. When its safe to do so schools should absolutely open not when there is zero risk but when it is at level comparable to 2020 but with the new variant I'm not sure what that level is and obviously the government and NPHET are very worried about the higher rate of transmission amongst younger people or we would be back at this stage so if they are worried about it then I think we all should be. It is very much until it visits your door that you dismiss covid and all the reports in the news about keeping safe it wears you down and pisses you off we all want to return to normality and the classroom is where every teacher I know would prefer to be but not at any cost. When you see a perfectly healthy relative hospitalised and ventilated your perspective changes.

History Queen

markodaly wrote: »

We should strip away the jnr/snr infant cycle from primary school and fully resource early years education, to replace it and add more years from 2 or 3 years old.

There should be 4-5 years of 'pre-school' early years education before a child even gets to 1st class of a primary school.

Just wondering what the advantage of removing junior and senior infants from primary school is? Surely it'd be better (for children) to fully fund and resource the existing ecce offering and retain junior and senior infants?

meeeeh

...Ghost... wrote: »

It's more likely you had nothing of substance to say. Best say nothing at all than to cry nonsense and tell porkies when another poster makes sense.

We can go on about delay of reporting that significantly increased the numbers in on week (8k) or do you also think that transmission magically dropped by 4000 cases in few days. Saying we had the highest number I the world that week is a bit of nonsense stat and anyone who knowingly states it as relevant for anything doesn't really deserve a reply.

The rest of the post was slightly misrepresenting a statement Madigan made, she never called kids with special needs not normal, she called other kids normal. Which is still wrong but a lot less wrong. It's that kind of stuff I have no desire debate. It's schoolyard tactics of winning arguments by lying about what people said and tailoring data the way it makes it look worse than it was (and it was bad). I have no respect for that and no I'm not going to reply.

shesty

History Queen wrote: »

Just wondering what the advantage of removing junior and senior infants from primary school is? Surely it'd be better (for children) to fully fund and resource the existing ecce offering and retain junior and senior infants?

Probably just rearranging deck chairs really.....incorporateJI and SI into the ECCE cycle and maybe do things through play more but I can't see any massive advantage myself.
As it is, I think many kids are now going to school later. My SI's class have now all started to turn 7 in the last month, they were the first year with 2 ECCE years, so most were well 5 by the time they went into JI.My second will be a JI in Sept and anecdotally, the youngest in her class will turn 5 in the Dec of JI (so will be 4 and 9 months going to school - will be the youngest child in the class).The rest will all be 5 and over come September when they start.The 2 ECCE years do them a lot of good, I wouldn't be im favour of starting a child too young myself.

meeeeh

History Queen wrote: »

Just wondering what the advantage of removing junior and senior infants from primary school is? Surely it'd be better (for children) to fully fund and resource the existing ecce offering and retain junior and senior infants?

I don't mind JI and SI in schools (I'm completely against any kind of homework for those two classes). My point was just that they won't be back to school first because they would be more affected academically, they will be back to school because it will make it easier for their parents. Academically I would more worry about 5th and 6th class loosing out.

khalessi

History Queen wrote: »

Just wondering what the advantage of removing junior and senior infants from primary school is? Surely it'd be better (for children) to fully fund and resource the existing ecce offering and retain junior and senior infants?

Especially considering the Aistear programme which starts in ECCE is continued in Junior and Senior infants over the last few years and the children love it.

History Queen

meeeeh wrote: »

I don't mind JI and SI in schools (I'm completely against any kind of homework for those two classes). My point was just that they won't be back to school first because they would be more affected academically, they will be back to school because it will make it easier for their parents. Academically I would more worry about 5th and 6th class loosing out.

I think the thinking around bringing them back early is that they are at a formative stage of their education and a cohort least able to engage effectively remotely. I don't think it makes much difference to parents (in that you have the same childcare issues with a five year old as you have with a ten year old although I appreciate 10 year olds are a bit more independent at home).

...Ghost...

meeeeh wrote: »

We can go on about delay of reporting that significantly increased the numbers in on week (8k) or do you also think that transmission magically dropped by 4000 cases in few days. Saying we had the highest number I the world that week is a bit of nonsense stat and anyone who knowingly states it as relevant for anything doesn't really deserve a reply.

The rest of the post was slightly misrepresenting a statement Madigan made, she never called kids with special needs not normal, she called other kids normal. Which is still wrong but a lot less wrong. It's that kind of stuff I have no desire debate. It's schoolyard tactics of winning arguments by lying about what people said and tailoring data the way it makes it look worse than it was (and it was bad). I have no respect for that and no I'm not going to reply.

When your reply is to say that you had written something and then decided, nah, why bother...and then proceed to rubbish the other persons post without anything to back your point up, it really doesn't help your argument and makes you look small. That's what I was getting at and it seems to be the type of post mentality that is growing on boards.



Not many years ago, moderators and other posters would take such comments from posters to task and point the poster to After Hours. I just don't think it adds value to thread when someone sidesteps a comment by calling it nonsense just because they disagree with it. Boards is not twitter, so use the extra characters to make a point if you have one to make. I've seen you make some great points.

khalessi

shesty wrote: »

Probably just rearranging deck chairs really.....incorporateJI and SI into the ECCE cycle and maybe do things through play more but I can't see any massive advantage myself.
f.

Already done has been for a few years