We’ve become very accustomed to inservice days for teachers – you know, the day in the Centre or other venue where you found out all about curriculum change and new methodology, with the friendly folk of the PPDS and the SLSS and all those other acronyms – SESS, LDS… Well all of that, or almost all of that, is coming to an end. In the current economic crisis, the services have been largely reorganized and the number of seconded teachers on the teams greatly reduced. The new service is called the Professional Development Service for Teachers, PDST, and is a combined team supporting primary and post primary schools on a regional basis. There are six regions nationally and a regional team will be available to schools for largely school based support. There will continue to be a high volume of after-school activity in the Education Centres and of course we expect continuing high levels of activity on our local courses.

All schools will have received a letter from the DES about PDST last week. Paddy Keays is the new Director of PDST and we wish him well in his new role. We also welcom Ciara O Donnell, our regional coordinator and her team. We’ll be introducing them to you in the near future.