December 5th: ACCS continues to support the PPEF at national and county level. There have been many protest and informational meetings held at various county venues around the country. A large gathering of parents and other school community members attended a meeting in Gorey on Monday December 1st. Nicholas Sweetman and Ciarán Flynn were among the speakers.
A high concentration of efforts at all meetings was to seek support for the National Protest Rally in Dublin. All Community and Comprehensive School personnel are asked to attend and to march behind the ACCS banner. ACCS members will meet at 12 noon outside Cassidy's Hotel on Parnell Square and join the march to Merrions Square. This will be, without doubt, the most important demonstration in respect of Education to take place in decades and the message being delivered by the presence of so many groups and individuals to the Minister and the Government will be very important.
Nov 26th: The Following letter has been sent out to all schools on behalf of the PPEF on Nov 26th.
Post-primary Education Forum
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To: All School Management, Teachers, Parents/ Guardians in Community, Comprehensive, Gael Colaiste, Secondary, Vocational and Community Schools/ Colleges.
Dear Colleague,
The education cutbacks announced in the budget are very damaging. They will damage the education service at every level. The proposed cutbacks will impact on the students in a negative way.
Parents/ Guardians, Teachers and School Management have all united in opposition to the cutbacks and have jointly organised this march and demonstration.
A march and demonstration against the education cutbacks is being held on:
Saturday, 6th December, 2008 in Dublin.
Assembly point is Parnell Square at 12 noon.
It is of vital importance that this march and demonstration is supported by as many people as possible to demonstrate to the government that damaging our education service is damaging our community, our society and our future economic and social well-being.
We ask all Parents/Guardians, Teachers, School Management and all those involved in education in any way to support this march. A united opposition to the proposed cutbacks is critical and your presence and voice is important to the success of the march.
We look forward to seeing you on December 6th.
With every good wish.
Sean McCann PPEF Co-ordinator
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The following message was sent out to all our schools yesterday (Nov 12th). It outlines the part that ACCS is playing in the PPEF and the work of that body in trying to mobilise concerted action by all the Education Partners against the cuts announced in Budget 2009. See more news in www.ppef.ie (from Nov 19th)
"It is a strongly held belief in ACCS that nothing short of a dedicated and concerted campaign against the Education Cuts will have any impact and that any organisation working in isolation will not have the desired effect. We are party to an organisation called the PPEF, Post-Primary Education Forum. The strength of this organisation is that it has the active involvement of the Education Partners in raising issues on educational matters and in particular to try to achieve additional funding for the educational system. The organisation was formed last year and I will have already sent out details of this body to you. As outlined on our web-site the PPEF has already taken action to fight the cuts. I attach a letter from the PPEF to all schools which encourages action at local level to try to achieve changes in the Budget 2009 Education Cuts. As you can see it is signed by the General Secretaries of the Management bodies, the Teacher Trade Unions and the President of the National Parents Council Post-Primary. We will also be publicising our efforts and supporting local committees through a new website http://www.ppef.ie/ which will be in operation next week.
The aim of the PPEF is to keep a campaign against the cuts going at both local and national level. We envisage that the campaign will culminate in a National Protest Rally in Dublin on December 6th at which we will need to show the strength of the combined forces of management, trade unions, teachers and parents. The National Steering Committee intend to establish a steering committee comprising of the same partners within each county, or main regions within counties where they are very large. The steering committee will consist of a partnership of trade union activists, school Principals and parents. The purpose of the steering committee will be to arrange meetings:
· To publicise the effects of the cuts
· To arrange for lobbying of local politicians in relation to the cuts
· To generate as much media activity as possible locally
· To arrange for participation at the national demonstration being organised by the parties across all sectors of the psrtnership to be held in Dublin on Saturday, December 6th 2008.
The National Steering Committee has engaged the services of Mr. Seán McCann to establish the local committees across the country. Seán will be working in co-operation with the NPCpp to contact local representatives of all the partners to convene initial meetings in each county. ACCS will be nominating a contact within each county to support this initiative. ACCS would urge its members to co-operate in every possible way with this initiative and if you as an individual Principal are requested to become a convenor we would strongly support your efforts in this regard and ask for your co-operation.
Ní neart go chur le chéile.
Le meas,
Ciarán Flynn, General Secretary, ACCS."