The insistence of Education Minister, Ruair\u00ed Quinn, that he cannot do more to reduce the back-to-school costs faced by parents has been described as pathetic by Sinn F\u00e9in Dublin South West TD Se\u00e1n Crowe<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is simply not good enough,\u201d Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said, \u201cthat Minister Quinn insists it is down to parents to lobby schools so that they are forced to introduce more affordable ways of paying for school uniforms and text books.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is true that each School Board of Management is responsible for matters of school policy and governance but they are also responsible to the school patron and ultimately, to the Minister for Education.<\/p>\n
\u201cYet Minister Quinn has stuck to his worn out and indifferent position that he cannot intervene and that he has no statutory powers to compel schools to adopt any particular policy regarding school uniforms.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has adopted this pathetic response despite the fact that he is permitted, under the 1998 Education Act, to issue recommendations on this (or any relevant) issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis proactive approach was taken in 2008 in relation to school uniforms when the then Minister for Education and Science and the Minister for Integration Policy jointly agreed recommendations on this issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cRecommendations were issued following extensive consultation with schools, management bodies and others and stipulated that whilst uniform policy was left for schools there should be meaningful engagement with the wider the school community when drawing up school uniform policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cSurely it is therefore possible for this current Minister to build on this and intervene directly with school boards of management on vital issues like back-to-school costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe findings of the recent Barnardo\u2019s Back to School survey, which highlights the real cost to many parents when clothing and equipping a child. They found that on average a parent spent a whopping \u20ac400 for a fourth-class pupil and almost \u20ac800 for a child starting second level.<\/p>\n
“This is unacceptable and beyond the resources of many hard pressed families.<\/p>\n
“Minister Quinn needs to come out from behind his comfortable desk and start doing something useful. His empty rhetoric at this particular time of year is simply not good enough especially when the punitive back-to-school costs are driving families to desperate measures like borrowing from illegal moneylenders.”<\/p>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The insistence of Education Minister, Ruair\u00ed Quinn, that he cannot do more to reduce the back-to-school costs faced by parents has been described as pathetic by Sinn F\u00e9in Dublin South West TD Se\u00e1n Crowe \u201cIt is simply not good enough,\u201d Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said, \u201cthat Minister Quinn insists it is down to parents to lobby […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,25,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-children","category-education","category-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":864,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions\/864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}