Kilkenny Cathaoirleach welcomes funding to combat educational inequality

Kilkenny and Carlow Educational Training Board is to receive extra funding of €27,320 to support community education for adult learners according to Cathaoirleach of Kilkenny County Council, Andrew McGuinness.

The funding comes as part of a national allocation ofc€5.8m announced by the Minister for Further and Higher Education Simon Harris TD under the Mitigating against Educational Disadvantage Fund.

The funding was secured as part of Budget 2021 to support community education for adult learners, who have the highest level of need.

Speaking to The Kilkenny People, Cathaoirleach Andrew McGuinness said, “This is positive news for Kilkenny and for Carlow as the aim of this funding is to help increase the participation of disadvantaged learners, particularly with the digital infrastructure including providing devices and software, and increasing their capacity to deliver online learning.”

“Unfortunately, many people are disadvantaged when it comes to reading, working with numbers or navigating the various digital platforms and many may not have gotten the appropriate help earlier on. There are now services that offer friendly assistance to help people get over that issue in a non-judgemental way and this funding will help those services,” he said.

“This funding will help tackle what many people call educational inequalities such as not having access to a laptop of iPad or even internet, supporting and encouraging disadvantaged learners and offering new training opportunities. I’m delighted to welcome this,” concluded Cathaoirleach McGuinness.