21st September 2020
INTO has today launched our Budget 2021 campaign, ahead of the budget on the 13th of October. We are calling on all members to support and share our key priorities to ensure we can keep our schools open.
The pandemic has highlighted the severe lack of funding for primary schools, the need to support school leaders, and in particular the supersized classes (of 30 pupils and more) across many schools which make social distancing practically impossible.
We need your help to raise our key Budget 2021 issues with the Minister for Education and across all parties in Leinster House. Our key priorities are:
- We need to secure a reduction in 2021 in the size of our primary school classes which are, shamefully, the largest in the EU;
- We must retain supports for Teaching Principals of one day per week for administrative work, and restart the restoration of Assistant Principal posts in schools which were cut severely in the last recession; and
- We must ensure that at a minimum the Covid-19 level of capitation funding (€208 per pupil) is maintained in the 2021 Budget.
We must also take the final steps to end the scandal of pay inequality in teaching, and of payment of the award made to Principal Teachers more than 10 years ago.
Add your voice to our campaign by emailing your local TD and Senator (click here) today and share with peers in your community.