Dangan NS - Parent Newsletter

Important Dates

• Monday 28th Oct - November 1st - School Closed for Halloween Break
• Friday November 15th - Exceptional Closure Day to facilitate Staff Training
• Monday 18th - Thursday 21st November - Parent Teacher Meetings
• December 4th - Staff Training (New Maths Curriculum) School Closed

Halloween Dress Up

The children can wear their Halloween Costumes this Friday 25 th October. Children will be going home at the normal home time on this day.

Halloween Break

The school will be closed from Friday 25th at 2:40pm. We will reopen on Monday 4 th November.

Yard

When we return after the Halloween break, the classes will have split yard breaks. Only 4 classes will be on yard at one time.

The Parents Asscoiation fundrasier 'Powerball' took place in school today. Powerball is an inflatable football goal challenge, where students kick a ball into a goal, with the speed measured by a radar system.

The children all recieved a PowerBall Certificate with their top score, and the best boy and girl in each class received a Gold Medal!

The children have been returning their sponsorship forms over the past week, with their prizes too follow in the coming weeks.

Well Done to everyone involved and thanks to the Parents Association for organising this event! More photos can be found on the school website https://dangannationalschool.ie/powerball-fundraiser/

Before the summer holidays, the Inspector from the Department of Education visited our school to conduct an inspection and evaluation into the provision of English in our school. The inspectors visited classrooms and talked to pupils about the work they were doing. The inspector also met with a focus group of pupils to hear what they had to say about their learning and experiences at school.

The inspectors observed the following during their two day visit...

• Learning was good. Pupils were enthusiastic about their learning and enjoyed reading and working with their classmates.
• Overall, teaching was very good. Teachers gave pupils very good opportunities to learn together and used lots very good activities to help pupils to learn.
• Teachers used many different ways to see how pupils were doing in their learning.

The full report will be published shortly on the website of the Department of Education (www.gov.ie).

Well done to the boys and girls who took part in the Peadar Lehane Football competition yesterday in Kildalkey. Mr. Kelly and Ms. Payne were delighted with the number of students who have been training for the competition, and both teams played really well.

Upcoming Sport

After the Halloween break we will have the remaining two rounds of the Peader Leanne 3rd and 4th class competitions. We would like to thank Ann and Summerhill GFC for donating some much needed footballs to the school. These will be a great help for our upcoming practice and matches. We will have the boys and girls hurling and camogie mini 7s on our first week back to school. We will also be entering the cross country athletics competition at the end of November.

The children will have gymnastics lessons with School Fitness Ireland for a six-week block from November to December. Based on pupil feedback following last year’s drumming lessons, we have opted for gymnastics this year. There is a €20 fee per child or a €40 fee per family, which can be paid via Aladdin at any stage over the next term.

The issue of making Education an election issue was something I spoke about at Tuesday evenings Parents Assocaition AGM. Please take the time to read to the end. It is vitally important that parents and guardians are aware of the realities of the budget and the impact on schools and pupils.

We must ensure education is an election issue, which it currently is not. We ask all parents and guardians to read and then email their local representatives to ask what they are doing to make education an election issue. There are questions attached for you to put to local TDs and canvassers on the run up to the election.

Key features for mainstream primary schools:

There was a 12% increase to permanent capitation funds, which is welcome but inadequate. Alongside this the one off cost of living grant from the previous two years was reduced. Capitation funding is used to pay for the running costs of schools, including electricity, heat, cleaning, insurance, all classroom resources and much more. Capitation is granted on a per pupil basis

768 new SET (Special Education Teaching) posts. This is between ~4000 schools. The increase is due to increased numbers of pupils in schools and new special classes

1600 new SNA (Special Needs Assistant) posts. This is also between ~4000 schools and primarily to support new special classes

€4 million funding for leadership posts. This will mean 1,000 additional Assistant Principal posts between primary and post primary schoolsl

€1.3 Billion for Building Projects – Unfortunately PE Halls or Sensory Spaces are not funded by the department and they must be financed by the school itself.

Key impacts for our school:

The continued inadequacy of funding is going to have a significant impact on our school in the coming year. It was very difficult to balance the budget last year and cash flow is very challenging throughout the year. I strongly believe that primary education should be truly free, and that schools shouldn’t need to ask for voluntary contributions or fundraisers to cover the absolute basics needed. Unfortunately, the government did not take this opportunity to bring that closer to reality. This reduction will mean we need to continue the level of fundraising in the current year. We are beyond grateful to how many families and staff who have signed up to our Lotto Fundraiser. We will do our best to avoid repeatedly asking parents for money, and look at options to engage with the wider community. We appreciate it is also a very challenging time financially for many families and we will never put pressure on parents and guardians for support.

Most members of the public will be unaware of the Education section of the budget. It’s something that often goes unnoticed, and isn’t widely discussed. I hopefully thought this would be a positive budget for Education. With the country in surplus, it seemed a great chance for the government to show that they support and value education. I hoped we would see a reduction in class sizes, which are currently the highest in the EU, and an increase in school funding. Unfortunately, we got neither. Education was not prioritised in this budget.

The headlines in the media will not reflect this. The headlines will be of free books for secondary schools, phone pouches and increases in staffing. But the headlines won’t explain that while parents/guardians may get ‘free books’, it will also fall on them to cover the shortfall in capitation funding, via fundraising etc. Or that the staffing increases are in line with demographics and won’t address the gaps that exist for support. Or that our pupils sit in classes that are on average larger than every other EU country, impacting their learning on a daily basis.

This budget guarantees a very stressful year of trying to balance a budget where grants simply won’t even cover the basics of insurance, light, heat and cleaning, but also trying to find ways to ensure our pupils have the resources in their classrooms that they deserve.

Call to Action:

Education was not prioritised in the last two budgets, and as things stand it will not be an election issue or priority for any party. I ask all parents to take time to Make Education An Election Issue. This will not happen unless there is enough public pressure to do so. Take 5 minutes in the coming weeks, to email your local representatives and make it clear that you know the realities of this budget and that in particular that the school funding deficits along with not reducing class sizes is not good enough. That our children deserve better. Please find below questions to email to your local TDs and those standing for election. You can find the email addresses for your local representatives here, just type in your Eircode.

If you have any questions, please get in touch.

Please be mindful that parking is limited. In the interest of being able to maximise the amount of collection points in the school for drop off and collection, we would kindly ask that you minimise large gaps when parking in front of or behind other cars as we have limited space available for collection and drop off.

Also, please be mindful of where you are parking when dropping and collecting your child, please do not park up on our neighbours grass or in front of their entrance gates.

After the Halloween break, I will be sending out a short survey for parents to identify if parents are interested in taking part in a voluntary Smartphone Agreement, to hold off on the purchase of smartphones for children until after primary school. This is an issue that was discussed at the Parent Association AGM on Tuesday evening and those parents present welcomed this initiative. During next term we will be working with the senior pupils in the school to get their opinions on phones and social media.

While creating their recent Action Plan on Bullying the Department of Education found that cyberbullying was the biggest concern for parents of young people. In addition to bullying, teachers across the country are reporting a decrease in attention levels in classrooms.

Following the parental survey and pupil input, we hope to devise a voluntary charter which discourages the use of smartphones and social media during primary school years.

Last week, we celebrated Maths Week, and the children had great fun engaging in the activities planned by their teachers. From outdoor maths trails to maths quizzes, the students enjoyed a variety of challenges. Our 5th class even competed against students from around the world in TimesTables Rockstars. The Class MVPs for our TimesTables Rockstars games during Maths Week are pictured below. Well done!