 The Student Teachers Placement Report, released last week by the unionist students in Ireland, in conjunction with several teachers trade unions, has brought forward a number of worrying statistics for student teachers in Ireland. Key statistics from the report showed a 42% of student teachers considered dropping out due to the financial pressures of work placement, with €160 the average cost of placement for a student teacher every week. 96% of the students on placement are finding a quote highly stressful due to the financial pressures, while 71% are forced into finding part-time work to cover their costs outside of their full placement week. A whopping 89% of current students and 79% of graduates also feel that the compulsory €1500 whale-talk fee should be drastically lowered. 33% of the respondents are studying in DCU's Institute of Education on the St Patrick's campus, which was the largest subsection of all colleges. This indicates a worrying trend for many future DCU graduates. But the USI have committed to three more years of campaigning to bring back the whale-talk grant, and DCU's voice president-elect for Education and Placement, Craig McHugh, has his own plans for action in the coming academic year. I think because DCU is such a large teaching population, we need to keep up the pressure. Me personally, I want to work with classrooms and students on the ground to mass-email the relevant ministers and government members to bring about a change in this. I also called on all the USI members during the week to go out there and contact their senators and their TDs to put pressure on them to reinstate the full whale-talk grant. I think it's only through public pressure and putting pressure on the representatives that we will get any change in that, so that's the way I'm going to focus on this. What's happening now is we're having a situation, becoming a teacher is actually going to be a class divide. If you're not rich enough, you can't become a teacher. That's absolutely ridiculous and it needs to change. The fight for student-teacher fee relief is ongoing, but for now, the problems of a lack of an agreed hourly rate and no grant for the whale-talk costs still exist. Alex Dunne, DCU TV News.