Kilkenny Education Centre News

The Minister for Education and Science, Batt O’Keeffe TD, visited Kilkenny Education Centre

Friday, October 23 2009

The Minister for Education and Science, Batt O’Keeffe TD, visited Kilkenny Education Centre recently and praised the work of the centre. Founded in 1997 to provide in-service training for teachers, the Education Centre was granted full time status in 2002.

Minister O’Keeffe noted the number of in-service courses that teachers have engaged in over the past few years and he highlighted the pivotal place that education centres play in the ongoing professional development of teachers. 

The Director of the Education Centre, Paul Fields, identified a number of initiatives that are currently ongoing in the centre. In particular, he highlighted a partnership project between the Education Centre and the Health and Safety Authority (HSA). The HSA has written a programme for post primary schools, and Kilkenny Education Centre is currently managing the role out of that programme on a national basis. Minister O’Keeffe thanked the HSA for developing this innovative project and emphasised the importance of students developing an understanding of health and safety issues before they enter the workplace.
A project that also caught the Minister’s attention was a programme aimed at improving literacy in primary schools. The programme entitled, Reading Recovery, is an early intervention programme designed to reduce literacy problems in an education system. It provides intensive, individual help for any children, who, after a year of schooling have not responded to classroom teaching in reading and writing. The director of Kilkenny Education Centre emphasised that the programme is not solely concerned with improving children’s reading and writing skills. “The term ‘Recovery’ implies a clear objective to help children acquire efficient patterns of learning which enable them, by the end of their supplementary programme, to work at the average level of their classmates and to continue to progress satisfactorily”, he stated.  Minister O’Keeffe saw first hand evidence of the improvement that the literacy programme can make. Two pupils, Natasha Curran and Shantelle Quigley, aged 6, from the Lake School, St John’s Junior, read extracts from two books for the Minister. He congratulated the pupils and told them how proud he, as Minister for Education and Science, is of their achievements.

The minister also congratulated Kilkenny on the 400th Anniversary of its city status. He praised Kilkenny Education centre for a forthcoming resource that is to be made available for every primary school teacher in the county. This contains an illustrated map, a DVD, and a book. It will be distributed to schools by the end of March.

Minister O’Keeffe thanked the staff, director, chairperson, and management committee of Kilkenny Education Centre for the tremendous work that that they are engaged in. The spirit of volunteerism, creativity, innovative ideas and approaches that he witnessed, left a marked impression on him, he stated.