By Sarah Curran
A BANGOR principal says she is delighted to reinstate a support classroom after receiving a funding boost.
The principal of Clandeyboye Primary School, Julie Thomas, said she is excited to once again welcome students to the school’s Nurture Classroom after it was announced they would be receiving £105,000 in funding to help run the support classroom.
Last year, budget cuts saw the school’s Board of Governors making the ‘devastating’ decision to suspend the support classroom.
Nurture classrooms are designed to support young pupils in P1-P3 in a small group setting, usually of around eight to 10 pupils. The class costs roughly around £9,000 per pupil each year to run.
The pupils receive specialist teaching and support, with the aim of improving attendance, tackling educational disadvantage and helping pupils with learning.
Children assessed as benefitting from the Nurture Classroom, remain with their base class, spending time with their peers in the morning, at break time, lunchtime and on school trips, as well as Fridays. However four days of the week they spend time in the Nurture Classroom with nurture staff.
However, facing a funding shortfall, the school had been subsidising the classroom since its doors opened four years ago, by around £30,000.
Having suspended their nurture room last year, the school did make other arrangements to try and help their students as best possible with support staff helping beyond their school day to support the children who would have benefitted from the support room.
Following a recent nurture funding boost announcement for 2026/27 by Education Minister Paul Givan, Mrs Thomas said she is delighted to reopen the Nurture Classroom at Clandeboye Primary School in the new school year.
“We are being given £105,000 and that has been allocated to all the nurture rooms in Northern Ireland, which is much more realistic funding for what is required to ensure that they run for a full academic year,” Mrs Thomas said.
“Schools have been subsidising the running of nurture rooms for quite a few years, and in some schools, like ourselves, the Board of Governors felt like they couldn’t continue to do that whenever they were looking at all the other projects that happen within school.”
Following a year’s suspension of the support classroom, Mrs Thomas said she was ‘really pleased’ to be able to offer the facility to her students again.
“We are really pleased the Minister has recognised the need and values nurture,” she said, adding that she hoped the funding continued moving forward.
“There is such a wealth of evidence to prove the benefits of nurture and the difference it can make to children and their families.”
Mrs Thomas outlined how the support room had ‘ripple effects’ within families, adding that it wasn’t just the child attending nurture provision who benefitted from the support.
The funding will be used primarily to staff the support provision, Mrs Thomas explained, as well as the resources needed and the day-to-day running of the room.
“The governors have been pleased we have been given this extra finance because it was a very tough decision to suspend it,” Mrs Thomas said.
