The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) has described the findings of the Chief Inspector’s report as an endorsement of the work undertaken in school communities at a time when the Irish education system remains shamefully underfunded by international standards.
According to the report, inspectors found the overall quality of teaching in post-primary schools to be good or very good in 92% of inspections.
The report also states that schools and settings demonstrated agility and responsiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The TUI has repeatedly made the point that as a result of historic underinvestment by international standards, Irish schools and colleges were forced to tackle the huge challenges of COVID-19 with large class sizes, over-stretched pastoral support systems for students and education facilities often unsuited to modern teaching and learning.
Now that the pandemic has put this gross negligence by successive Governments into sharp focus, the process of appropriately funding the education system must begin by significantly increasing the education budget to bring us, at the least, up to the OECD average.