NI Conservatives’ spokesman, Mark Brotherston, has challenged the Sinn Féin education minister, John O’Dowd, to be “crystal clear” about plans for funding schools. Mr O’Dowd held a consultation into his proposals and received 15,000 responses, most of which appear to have been highly critical.
“O’Dowd received a furious reaction to his ill-conceived plans to fund schools and seems to be backtracking as quickly as he can”, Mark noted. “However he now claims that no school will be worse off following this re-organisation and, yet, schools which were set to benefit will still get more money. The minister needs to provide some pretty convincing answers to some very pressing questions about how this might work.”
“First of all, if he does still intend to make extra payments to schools, where is the money coming from? How will it be divided and most importantly, how will it be spent? Mr O’Dowd cannot be allowed to get away with fudging this issue. The education of our children is too important and he owes it to parents and pupils to be completely up front. The minister needs to explain how he intends to tackle underachievement with extra resources and why his record in this regard is so lousy up to now.”