SCHOOLS DISABILITY AWARENESS PROGRAMME COLLECTION INCENTIVE

The Department of Education and Science (DES) has committed to developing Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure in schools in Ireland. The purpose of this commitment is to help teachers incorporate ICT into their skill sets and teaching practice and develop curriculum and learning resources that make use of ICT, therefore ensuring the development of the ’smart economy’ so commonly talked about these days.

However, the Department has made available only €1,700 to each primary school for the sole purpose of purchasing an interactive system. That equates to one system in one classroom. One of their (DES) criteria stipulates that the system must be ‘fixed’ and the money cannot be spent on anything else until each classroom in each school has an interactive system.

Schools are desperate to say the least to acquire as much IT equipment as possible. However due to the extremely limited resources available to schools, this is somewhat of an overwhelming task. Heidi Collins, the (new) Principal of St. Francis Xavier Junior School in Castleknock outlined their need recently. They are in great need of everything from desk tops to lap tops to digicams to printers and the pinnacle of their needs is the interactive white board.

We know already Textile Recyclers Ltd. have approached schools to offer ICT (or cash) in exchange for textile collections.

The Jack & Jill foundation presented 600 schools with IWBs in 2010. They have 1700 schools signed up for their 2011 programme.

Tesco have been providing ICT to schools for some years now with their voucher scheme.

We have learned the importance of the role schools can play in delivering merchandise for our needs with our Disability Awareness programme. However with the added incentive of our ‘rewards’ scheme, the results could prove to be greater still.

While I would still envisage our programme being lead by the Disability Awareness element, the major goal for the school would obviously shift to the ICT equipment. The onus however would be on the school to collect only saleable merchandise, as this will impact on how quickly they will achieve their target.

Equally, we would encourage the schools to promote the programme with local businesses in order to seek assistance in achieving their targets. Likewise we could promote the programme with businesses and ‘credit’ their locally registered school with their results.

I propose to run a test programme, again in the Dublin 15 area, and based on the results, and if good, to promote it on a National scale.

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Gerard Kenny.

10.02.2011