Prep funding - it's a hot topic...

For your reading, here are a few other blogs in which the prep funding issue is making its mark. We have come a long way in highlighting this issue in the last 5 weeks.

http://eye-on-the-hill.blogspot.com/2010/03/clowns-to-left-of-me-jokers-to-right.html

http://bobballs.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/quiet-middle-class-riot-in-progress/

http://www.poblish.org/article.jsp?id=250294

http://jeffpeel.net/2010/03/24/new-prep-school-funding-campaign-blog/

http://oconallstreet.com/2010/03/15/prep-schools-and-ministerial-solo-runs-party-before-region-yet-again/

Strangford MLA meets Children's Commissioner on Prep School Funding

Bell meets Children’s Commissioner on Prep School Funding

The trauma that prep school pupils are unnecessarily being put through has been raised directly with the Children’s Commissioner by Strangford DUP MLA Jonathan Bell. Jonathan Bell MLA sought the meeting after being contacted by a parent of a Prep school child with special educational needs. Speaking after the meeting with Patricia Lewsley at the NICCY Headquarters in Belfast Jonathan Bell MLA stated;

“Rarely have I seen children put through such unnecessary trauma and stress as this ludicrous consultation on withdrawing Prep school funding by September 2010. Is it not now widely acknowledged that it is a case of when not if this ill-thought through proposal to withdraw funding by 2010 falls.

I specifically raised the plight of children with special educational needs as I am aware that the trauma of facing removal from their school, isolation from their peers/friends, dislocation from teaching supports of which a productive educational relationship has been formed – is causing stress and undue pressure. Put bluntly as the Minister for Education fiddles with their educational future vulnerable children in my constituency are suffering emotional distress.

I welcome strongly the Children’s Commissioner going public and placing her view on this matter into the public domain. Patricia Lewsley said:

“However, the method the Minister is using to end such funding is not in the best interest of the child, and is potentially causing undue distress.”

The question must be asked - Does the best interest of the child and the potential for causing them undue distress surely not trump the ideology of the Education Minister?”

SOURCE: http://www.dup.org.uk/default.htm

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