Dr O’Sullivan said she is aware of one woman who has had to take out a loan to pay for her child’s TY trip.
Author Katriona O’Sullivan’s younger son is going into TY next year and the school has organised a four day trip to Italy.
Dr O’Sullivan said she was “quite shocked” that the total cost of the trip is €750 and considers herself lucky she can afford it.“He said, ‘Mam, the kids who can’t afford it are usually the naughty ones who don’t do transition year,’” she told“The fact that he knew that shocked me; it was also the fact that there was this bias in selection in schools around who gets to do transition year was also a further thing that I was shocked around.
Dr O’Sullivan grew up in poverty in an Irish diaspora family in Britain and wrote about her childhood in her memoirI grew up in Birmingham, born to Irish parents who loved drugs more than me, I had a baby at 16,was homeless & helpless...I am now an award winning academic-grants worth millions, publications,a loving family & a full heart!Although she now works as an academic at Trinity College, she has never forgotten what it is like to go without.
“This idea that some kids get to do Transition Year and some kids don’t and it’s based on behaviour, that really upset me,” she said. “I know that happens but just to hear my own child say it in such a blasé way, it just made me realise how wrong it is.”“Across schools, there’s different ways of selecting students for TY,” she said.Adult vaccine programme could cut hospitalisations by 75,000 – McConkey
News Children Education Poverty School Transition Year Ty
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