An emergency meeting has been held in Co Derry to discuss the impact of drastic budget cuts on local schools.
Staff redundancies, bigger classes, reduced subject choices at GCSE and A Level as well as cuts to additional resources are just some of the changes that secondary schools across County Derry will have to make as a result of the cuts imposed by the Department of Education.
Post primary schools are not alone, primary schools right across the board are also facing deficits of thousands of pounds in their budgets after Minister O’Dowd announced that the Aggregated Schools Budget will be cut by 0.8 per cent.
Chair of Mid Ulster Primary Principals Association, Martin Whyte, who is the head teacher at St Oliver Plunkett’s PS, Toome in Co Derry, said he had no choice but to call the ‘emergency meeting’ because ‘schools are in crisis’.
The meeting took place at Magherafelt Primary School.
Mr Whyte said: “The budget cuts will mean staff redundancies, reduction in hours for some staff and not renewing temporary contracts among teaching and non-teaching staff as well as bigger classes.
“My main concern is that each child is only given one chance at each particular year group.
“We want every child to get the best of each year and a school with a high morale, is important for that.
“The problem with cutting hours and staff being made redundant is that affects morale in the school. Due to worries, staff start to lose their focus and the school’s performance on a whole begins to suffer.
“These cuts will undermine the whole school and it will begin to deteriorate. This will impact all schools both primary and secondary across the North, a whole generation of our children will lose out. This is not just for one year, it estimated that it could last between three and five years.
“That is why we have decided to call this emergency meeting because it is an emergency. Schools are in crisis,” said Mr Whyte.
On Friday, principal of St Mary’s Grammar School in Magherafelt, Deirdre Gillespie, called an urgent meeting with local MLAs and a number of local principals to discuss their concerns on the budget.
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