Debate contribution: Playgroups in West Tyrone: EA Admission Allocations
Debate contribution by Mr Maolíosa McHugh on .
- MLA
- Mr Maolíosa McHugh
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 18 March 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Adjournment
- Heading
- Playgroups in West Tyrone: EA Admission Allocations
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4860855
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I would like to comment on the same issue. I declare an interest as the chairman, or cathaoirleach
, of Naíscoil na Deirge, which offers independent preschool provision. I will not talk about Naíscoil na Deirge, however, because, in fact, it has healthy numbers and is well allocated with the places that we require. I will talk about other preschool provision in my area about which people have contacted me. It is the second or third year on the trot that I have written letters on their behalf to the likes of the Education Authority. It is a perennial problem, year after year. Those providers' very existence is threatened. I will just clarify for people that the type of provision that we are talking about needs to have at least eight children in order to be on the preschool education group (PEG) programme. You can see how precarious it is for a setting to have its places capped at nine children. Within a year, it may have fewer than nine and, all of sudden, find that it is threatened because it does not have the numbers to stay on the PEG programme.
The PEG programme essentially pays for the teachers for that type of provision, so it is important that, in the first instance, providers have the numbers required to sustain their programme.
Year after year, two playschool providers in the Derg area — one in the Glebe and the other in Clady — come to me with the problem of their not being able to increase their preschool numbers, even though there is, without doubt, demand for places. That demand is as a result of smaller communities having the resilience and strength to protect their local provision. If it is not provided locally, problems often arise from children having to travel to a town 3, 4 or 5 miles away. If no transport system exists, parents are, all of a sudden, under pressure. It is therefore important that we embrace the issue and make provision for children to attend preschool. I keep using the term "preschool", but that is not the correct term as such. Children, however, should be accommodated, so the Education Authority needs to think about how restrictive its conditions are at present. When I make an application to the EA for it to increase provision, I am given the same reasons for its not doing so. It will make an exception for a twin, for a child with special needs or for security reasons. Otherwise, places are very limited, so families who have traditionally gone to a particular provider now find that access is not just as easy as one might think it would be. Should the provider have more applicants than there are spaces available, they find themselves under pressure. I therefore ask the Education Authority to reconsider its conditions or expand the number of available places in order to facilitate applicants. I have one more point to make before I finish. If a particular provider does not get the numbers that it requires, why can those places not then be allocated to other providers in the locality? I have always wondered what the reason is for not allowing that.
535 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Awaiting analysis
This record has not been analysed yet. It is not counted in any total until it has been assessed.
Disagree with this assessment?
Classifications can be challenged. A person reviews every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.