Jewish Community, Identity and Memory: Perspectives from Belfast; Call for healing ceremony for pardoned ‘deserters’; Surge in pupil numbers will drive demand for 4,500 extra teachers; Fairness and college grants
Jewish Community, Identity and Memory: Perspectives from Belfast.
On 11 September from 9:00AM in The McClay Library the QUB School of History and Anthropology are staging a symposium on Jewish identity, culture and memory, with invited speakers currently working in the areas of British and Irish Jewish history and immigration. Registration fee £8-00 (includes lunch, tea and coffee)
Closing date for registration Monday 3 September 2012. For further information contact Jewishstudiesconf@qub.ac.uk Organiser Telephone : 028 9097 3325 http://www.whatsonatqueens.com/home/events/CurrentEvents/EventStore/Name,311681,en.html
Call for healing ceremony for pardoned ‘deserters’
Independent – The family and supporters of Irish servicemen recently pardoned for deserting the Irish army to fight with Britain have called for a healing State ceremony to bring closure to their years of persecution.
The 4,500 solders branded deserters were told in June by Justice Minister Alan Shatter that they were to be pardoned.
In a new BBC radio documentary, Pardon for the Disowned Soldiers, the daughter of 92-year-old Dublin solider Philip Farrington, who helped liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, said her father was haunted all of his life by the fear of further reprisals after he spent six months in jail in Cork for desertion.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/call-for-healing-ceremony-for-pardoned-deserters-203794.html
Surge in pupil numbers will drive demand for 4,500 extra teachers
Independent – More than 4,500 extra second-level teachers will be needed to cater for a bigger than expected growth in pupil numbers over the next decade, latest figures suggest.
This works out at an extra 320 teachers each year — at a time when the Government is trying to curb public service numbers.
More primary teachers will also be needed to cope with a jump in pupil numbers, as predictions also came in higher than previously forecast.
If more teachers are required to cope with more pupils, the Government may have to look at other ways to keep a lid on the payroll in the coming years, such as making class sizes bigger.
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/education/latest-news/surge-in-pupil-numbers-will-drive-demand-for-4500-extra-teachers-3195811.html
Fairness and college grants
Irish Times Comment column – A Government decision to subject third-level maintenance grants to a new capital asset test for farmers and the self-employed is generating strong resistance within the agricultural community. Intense lobbying of rural Fine Gael TDs, and meetings with Ministers, have taken place in recent months as the Irish Farmers’ Association has argued that the inclusion of productive assets in such assessments would show “a complete bias against farmers and the self-employed”.
The reality is somewhat different. As things stand, Government cutbacks in third-level education have been compensated for through the imposition of higher registration fees. Students receiving maintenance grants do not pay such fees. As far back as 1993, the De Buitléir report found these groups easily avoided paying third-level fees by declaring lower income levels for the qualifying years. As a consequence, fee-paying students from PAYE families frequently find themselves in the company of well-off, grant-aided colleagues. Such inequity should not be allowed to persist.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0811/1224321996277.html