I beg to move:—
"That the Vocational Education Bill, 1930, be read a Second Time."
Anybody who has followed the course of technical education in this country for the last decade or twenty years will readily appreciate that there are a variety of things which have made this Bill necessary. Even the lapse of time itself would have been a sufficient reason for the introduction of a Bill of this kind. The system under which we are working at present stretches back, as far as its legislative foundations are concerned, practically a generation. In the course of that generation new problems have arisen which those who were responsible for the original legislation had, naturally enough, not been able to take into account, and the existing provisions are no longer enough to enable us to keep sufficiently abreast of the times. I need not say, in connection with this Bill and the necessity for it, that I am not decrying in the slightest the amount of solid work that has been done under the old system; nor do I deny that even under the old system considerable advances are still possible, and in the case of the last few years advances have been made. But undoubtedly the present system, from the purely legislative point of view, is cumbersome, and there are many hindrances contained in the existing legislation, and still more perhaps in the lack of proper provisions, that make a new departure necessary. An overhaul, therefore, is due, and we feel that if this Bill in its main provisions receives the approval of the Oireachtas we will be in a much better position to deal with the problems that will face us at least in the course of the next five or ten years.
Technical education, as Deputies are aware, was brought under the control of the Department of Education by the Ministers and Secretaries Act, 1924. One of the first things we did was to have the existing system and its actual working out departmentally examined. The examination was a thorough one, carried out by the officials of the Department, and the conclusion I came to when I read the report on the existing system was that a considerable overhauling was necessary. We might have proceeded in the way that the Government is occasionally accused of proceeding, in a very bureaucratic fashion, relying on our own wisdom without consultation with anybody. Instead of that we preferred to get the opinion of everybody in the country who was interested in technical education and who was willing to give an opinion. We had evidence from various sources showing that the defects of the existing system were felt not merely by ourselves in the Department, but by those who were interested in technical education in one way or another and who were brought into contact with the working of the existing system.
We had a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the existing system in the various schools through the country and also amongst the public who interested themselves in this particular matter. Those people outside the Department were not merely conscious of the existing difficulties, but they also in many cases had a pretty shrewd idea of the actual needs of the schools in this respect. We, therefore, appealed to the experience of those in the country who had shown themselves interested. I might say so far as this Department is concerned that in general we are always anxious to appeal to that experience. I feel that no matter what Bill is passed it will be necessary continually to keep in close touch with those who have the actual working of the system in their hands. That is one reason—I shall deal with it more fully afterwards—why there is very definite provision in the Bill for gradual development. We felt that it is much sounder and healthier and more productive to bringing about better results that we should proceed gradually and slowly, not on any a priori conceived plan, tackling the different problems as they come up, and getting wisdom from our experience of the working of the Bill.
It is idle to pretend that there is any chance of putting a system that is ideally perfect into operation. From the paper point of view, a thing may be ideally perfect but when it comes to actual practice, as everybody knows, it might show itself to be entirely unsuited to the definite circumstances to deal with which it is called into existence. Even the experience that we now have at our command, gathered as a result of the labours of the Technical Commission, would not be sufficient to guide us. I feel that it is only in the course of the working out of the Bill that we shall be able to feel our way, so to speak, forwards and advance gradually to our goal.
After our departmental examination of the system one of the first conclusions I came to was the necessity of setting up a Commission to examine thoroughly into the whole question. I need not dwell on the character of that Commission. It was representative; it was composed of people who in one way or another had been closely in touch with this particular form of education. I have already expressed on more than one occasion my thanks to the members of the Commission for the very valuable work they did for the country, and I should now like to do so once more. We had many members from the country itself, and in addition, we had the advantage of two foreign experts, both from rather small countries, countries that we felt might have problems to face pretty much the same as we have to face. We felt, on the whole, that it was more advisable to get men from countries of that type rather than from the countries that are large, and that are fully industrialised. The foreign experience that we got from those members of the Commission we found to be extremely useful. Looking at the matter in a little more detached way than would always be possible for those living in the country, those members were able to present points of view that might otherwise have escaped our notice. In that and various other ways the Department has been able to get into touch with the various modern systems at present in vogue in Europe.
However, I want the proposals in this Bill examined on their merits, and not merely because they were recommended, and recommended even by the Commission. The Commission undoubtedly is an important source of authority, if I might use that phrase, for us here. It would be a much safer guide, for instance, than to quote the example of other countries, or statements made by educationalists in other countries, because these are things the Commission had before them, and in addition, they had what people from other countries have not before them, namely, the peculiar nature of our particular problems. Therefore, from the point of view of technical education as a whole, those who are interested in it will find that for this country the most valuable source of information to which they could apply would be the report of the Technical Commission. A large amount of evidence was received; and a number of witnesses sent in statements and were examined. Like the Commission itself, that evidence was of a very representative character.
As a result, the Commission found itself in a position to put forward a number of very definite recommendations. Most of them were recommendations that were capable of being acted upon and all of them were worthy of the closest attention and examination. When on one or two important matters—one important matter especially—I felt compelled to depart from the recommendations of the Commission, it was with extreme regret that I adopted such a course. Some of the 90 recommendations in the report were capable of being put into operation immediately. Others could only be put into operation if new legislation was passed. Even as to some of those which in the strict technical sense did not require legislation in order to put them into operation, I considered we should postpone dealing with them in any way fully until we had the new system of legislation operative, because if such a course was not adopted we probably would have been up against the serious drawback of tentatively taking certain steps forward and, when the new legislation became operative, we should have to retrace those steps as not leading in the proper direction.
A certain amount of criticism has been indulged in in connection with the delay in the introduction of the Bill. I can assure the House that there was no avoidable delay. There were a number of important recommendations. Some of these in themselves appeared very clear and definite and quite easy to put into legislation. But, even before handing the matter over to the draftsman, when we began to consider some of the most important of these recommendations, not merely as something that was desirable, but as something involving practically twenty or thirty other provisions in order to make them effective, we saw that close examination was required of the different recommendations, and that in itself required time. So did the consultation that was necessary with the various other Departments involved. Even when the matter was ready from what I might call the departmental point of view it was found an extremely difficult Bill to draft. The implementing of the recommendations led, in many cases, to a great deal of difficulty, raised problems that were not always fully considered, and could not have been fully considered, when the Commission put them forward.
So far as this particular Bill is concerned there are two important particulars in which it departs, or seems to depart, from the recommendations of the Commission. Those who are familiar with the report of the Commission will remember that the report attached considerable importance to the legislation dealing with apprenticeship in connection with the subject of technical education. That is not legislated for in this Bill. The other matter in which there is a departure from the recommendation of the Commission, and an important one, is the limits of the compulsory powers given to the Minister. In that respect the recommendation of the Commission went further, not than we should like to go, but than we found was practicable to carry out. With the last matter I shall deal subsequently.
I should like now, however, to say something as to why the apprenticeship recommendations are not dealt with more fully in this Bill. When we were first dealing with the report of the Commission we took all the recommendations and worked out what was involved in putting them into effect. When several pages of the heads of sections dealing with apprenticeship were put before me, I found that five-sixths of them were matters regulating not the education of apprentices, but the whole question of apprenticeship. They belonged to the extent of five-sixths to another Department altogether—the Department of Industry and Commerce. Therefore, in fact, that is not a departure from the recommendations of the Commission. They only required legislation and they did not state by which Department it should be brought in. There is, as I have indicated, a Bill in the process of being drafted, promoted by the Department of Industry and Commerce, to lay down the general conditions of apprenticeship and to provide for the setting up of apprenticeship committees. Deputies will find that though we ourselves were not capable of dealing with the question of apprenticeship in this Bill, we did make provision to attune our Bill to the other Bill when the other Bill should be introduced. We provided, so far as apprenticeship is concerned, for the close co-operation of the two Departments. While waiting for the other Bill to become law we have made provision even for compulsory attendance for technical education from sixteen to eighteen in certain circumstances. The apprenticeship committees not being capable of being set up under this Bill, we have followed the spirit of the Technical Commission in that respect, and we have arranged for consultation with the trades when there is a question of introducing compulsory attendance at technical schools for the young employees in certain trades; that is, consultation with both the employers and the employees.
It may be necessary to give the House some idea of the problem that we have to face and that this Bill gives is, to a large extent, the legislative machinery for dealing with. I have on more than one occasion pointed out the great importance to this country of a proper system of training in the struggle for existence, especially since the War, that most nations in Europe—possibly in the world, but certainly in Europe— have to indulge in. A very important factor that may decide the ultimate outcome will be the training that the youth of the different countries receive. This applies not merely to industrialised countries, but to agricultural communities. It applies in this country not merely to the towns, it applies as well to the country districts. There must be a better preparation for farming instruction, and then a certain amount of other useful instruction of a practical kind, useful to the small farmer especially, can be given to the young boy or girl whose life is destined to be spent on the farm. If the Deputies bear in mind the disappearance from the countryside of carpenters, masons and harness-makers, they can grasp the importance that a practical system of continuation education might be, even from that point of view, to the country districts. Still more important is the question of dealing with a boy of fourteen when he leaves— as most of them do leave—the National School and is going to spend his life in the country. Undoubtedly, so far as the boy from fourteen to sixteen is concerned, the needs of a certain percentage of them are already met, under the educational system of the country, in the existing technical classes that are to be found in operation in different portions of the country, and also in the primary and secondary schools. Continuation education itself is not something entirely new so far as the country is concerned. As I say, a considerable amount of it is done even under the existing schemes, done not in the whole-hearted, not in the clear-sighted way in which we would like it done. Owing to the organic way in which the thing has grown, it is mixed up very often in a very confused fashion with technical education, in the narrow sense of the word; it is mixed up in such a way as I am convinced is not to the ultimate advantage of either the continuation education, on the one hand, or technical education on the other.
As an example of existing facilities for continuation education I might instance the trades preparatory schools. There is also in connection with a number of technical schemes through the country a number of day commercial classes. But the most successful example of vocational continuation education at present in existence, so far as State assistance is concerned, for boys at all events, would be the trades preparatory schools. On more than one occasion I have expressed my dislike of the word continuation education. I have kept it because any other word that I can think of would be at least equally objectionable and equally misleading. My objection may be summed up in a sentence from a paragraph in the Report, paragraph 105, which deals with the outlook of what I may call the ordinary primary school, and the outlook in the kind of continuation education school that I should like to see in existence.
"The school atmosphere," they say, "should be quite different from that of the primary school. The teaching should be on lines suited to adults rather than school children, the pupils being made conscious that it is to their interests to avail themselves of the services of the teacher and that the responsibility for doing so rests on them rather than on him."
Wherever continuation schools, whole-time or part-time, are set up under this Bill when it becomes an Act, that ought to be the guiding principle as regards the atmosphere that should prevail in the school. I would call that especially to mind to anybody in or out of the House who has feared that this Bill proposes to do away with continuation education for people above the age of sixteen. It proposes nothing of the kind, as I will show in a moment, nor does it propose that the atmosphere in a continuation school should be the atmosphere unsuited to adults. I say I dislike the word continuation, because it gets the idea into people's heads—it is hard to avoid it—that this is simply a continuation of the primary schools. It is not a continuation of the primary school. It follows it, but as people can see by a reference to Section 3 of the Bill, where the words continuation education are defined, it is meant to supplement it, and, as I say, the real atmosphere is as indicated in the paragraph of the report that I have just read. Transitional might be a word that could be used, except that it may not be transitional in the sense that a compulsory system of continuation education may not lead to a compulsory system, for instance, in the country of technical education. Introductory would have the same objection, and those who are familiar with the working of our present technical system would, I am sure, be anxious to avoid the word introductory.
Looking at the extent of the problem we have to deal with in the Bill, you have, roughly speaking, a distinction made between vocational education and technical education, and the compulsory clauses of the Bill have reference to two sets of ages, fourteen to sixteen for continuation education, and sixteen to eighteen for technical education. That does not mean, as I have already indicated, that continuation education is to be confined to those who are between fourteen and sixteen years and that technical education is to be confined to those who have reached the age of sixteen and have not yet reached the age of eighteen. That only deals with the compulsory powers in the Bill. Continuation education will, in fact, extend beyond the age of sixteen, as will technical education beyond the age of eighteen.
There is a conception abroad due to the concentration on the compulsory clauses in the Bill that continuation education stops automatically at the age of sixteen and then technical education begins. That is not the case, and there is nothing in the Bill to justify that particular interpretation. However, for the purpose merely of indicating to some extent the problem that we have to deal with, take these ages fourteen to sixteen and sixteen to eighteen, from many points of view, I admit, the more important ages when we are considering vocational education, more important than any other year or set of years that we might mention. The number of young people in the country between fourteen and sixteen years of age I should roughly estimate as being 120,000. Of these, anything up to 45,000 would receive education in primary schools or in secondary schools. That leaves altogether about 75,000 boys and girls in the country, roughly speaking, whose education comes to an end, so far as systematic control of it is concerned, at the age of fourteen unless they go into one of the existing technical schools. If you get an attendance ultimately of 75 per cent. of that number you will have altogether, therefore, about 55,000 young people for whom provision will have to be made for continuation education, part-time or whole-time. I have on more than one occasion referred to that problem of the boy who has left school at the age of fourteen and who stays about the farm, who is too young to get technical agricultural training and is in danger in the course of a couple of years of forgetting a great deal of what he learned in the national school. I do not intend to dilate on it now. Everybody is familiar with it. To such it is proposed to give the opportunity, by gradually bringing into operation the weapon of compulsion, of at least continuation of formal instruction. It is quite true that the number of hours per week, in the country districts especially, will make no undue demand on their time. That was clearly envisaged by the Commission. Everybody who knows the condition of the country will probably be in agreement on that point of view. It will mean that they will be getting education of a different type, partly cultural, and there will be a more practical agricultural bias to the instruction they will be receiving. They will be taught in the spirit of the paragraph that I have quoted and that ought to prevail in the school. If that spirit prevails to a large extent in the school they will be taught to look upon the school as something practical connected with their daily life. The hours of instruction that they will have in the country will at least be helpful to them in enabling themselves, during their leisure time, to improve on the instruction and on the education that they receive in the schools.
Undoubtedly there is something in the complaint that there is a danger at present that the boy or girl who, in the country especially, leaves school at the age of fourteen may forget a great deal of what they learn in the primary schools. If I may again quote from the report of the Technical Commission, it says:
Outside the urban centres, in which there are established technical schools, there are in general no facilities for filling the gap that exists between the primary school-leaving age and the time when the student, as an adult, joins an itinerant technical or winter agricultural course. It can readily be appreciated that there are grave objections, from an educational standpoint, to a period of idleness or of indefinite educational purpose in the life of young people from 14 years upwards and there is a consensus of opinion that the existing serious gap should not be allowed to continue.
In that continuation education a thing that ought to be continually in the minds of the people responsible for the running of the schools is that the occupation, the business, of the persons attending the classes should be always before their minds. On the other hand, no continuation system of education should neglect the cultural side. I quite admit there are definite advantages to be had by those pupils who stay on at the national schools. We have 32,000 in the country who stay on after 14 years many of whom attain the 7th and 8th standards. Especially if they are under a highly efficient teacher, they can get one of the best forms of education, and that is wise supervision, while they are to a large extent instructing themselves.
I do not wish to decry in any way the advantages that other sections of the population get from the secondary schools in the country; but for the great bulk of the people, not merely are there no facilities at present in existence but these two types of education that I have referred to are not suitable. I will again quote from the report of the Technical Commission:
We believe that there are many secondary schools, the large majority of whose pupils do not remain in attendance beyond the Intermediate Certificate age.
That is, roughly, the age 14 to 16.
It is our view that the curricula of such schools should be designed to meet the needs of the majority, and should be influenced to a slight extent only by the needs of a small minority proceeding to university and professional life. In such curricula there should be a distinctly practical tendency.
We have given the opportunities in our secondary programme to any secondary school in the country that wishes to adopt that particular line. I am not quite sure whether the recommendation of the Commission was for the schools or to us to try to compel the schools. So far as existing schools are concerned everybody will recognise the difficulty, even the impossibility, of forcing them to give up a certain type of education and take on another. I think this, however, might be considered. Where there is in existence a secondary school carrying on a certain type of ordinary secondary education and where in the same district an application comes in for another school to be set up, it might be reasonable to consider whether, in the recognition being given to this new application, conditions might not be laid down along the lines suggested in recommendation 14.
Continuation education must have a distinctly practical bias. That is obviously so in the case of the towns and it must also be so in the case of the country. Rural science, rural arithmetic, domestic economy, hand work and metal work will have to play a very definite part in the curriculum for these continuation schools. It is hoped that the practical bias that will be given to education at these schools, with the pupils between the ages of 14 and 16 years, will have some good effect in overcoming the dislike, to which many people have called attention, on the part of young people to agricultural work in the country and industrial work in the towns. It is not desirable that classes set up in different portions of the country should be all cast in the same mould. It is desirable that in all the schools there should be this overriding consideration as to the atmosphere that should prevail—the absence of the atmosphere which the pupil gets in the primary school and the definitely vocational character of the education that is to be given. That applies especially to those between the age of fourteen and sixteen, and even on to seventeen or eighteen, who attend those schools.
There is nothing in the Bill to prevent people attending certain subjects or certain classes only in these particular schools. A certain amount of criticism has appeared in the Press and has come to us in the post suggesting that the Bill makes it impossible for adults to attend Irish classes. There is nothing in the Bill suggesting anything of the kind. There is an important problem for the farming community as well as for the towns. I am dwelling on the farming community side of this problem because there is a greater willingness to accept the advisability, the inevitability, of continuation education as applied to towns than there is to the country districts. I am making the case, therefore, on what to the ordinary man very often seems the weaker side. In what I say any reference to the farming community applies with a great deal more force, if possible, to the towns. There are a couple of pages in the Commission's report that are rather enlightening from that point of view. Paragraph 97 says:
Witnesses before the Commission were almost unanimous in the view that formal technical or agricultural education should not begin before the age of 16 and should not be based on primary education solely, no matter how efficient the system of primary education might be.
If advantage is to be taken of the various instructions that give formal education in farming in the technical sense, you must have as a preliminary to that, bridging over the years between 14 and the time when pupils are ripe enough to receive their education, this intermediate stage of the continuation schools:
Primary school pupils at 14 are not mature enough to appreciate the realities of employment and the special forms of instruction that relate thereto; they require to be brought through an intermediate stage where they can obtain an education with sufficient practical bias to help to correct the dislike for industrial work which is a characteristic common to the youth of to-day leaving the primary and indeed the secondary schools.
The following paragraph is of interest:
It is necessary, therefore, in our opinion, to provide facilities for both whole-time and part-time education. These facilities should be effective through a new programme of continuation schools and classes.
So far as the technical side of the matter in subsequent years is concerned, the report says:
A really constructive policy of education is required to make work on the land efficient, and this cannot be effected in the absence of a continuation system of education.
The realisation of the need of this particular type of education is general in many of the rural areas. The present system, especially in the rural districts, owing to the short periods in which instructors are often present, has very definite drawbacks although a considerable amount of eagerness was shown to attend the classes of the instructors. I remember a man closely connected with technical education in one of the towns complaining very strongly that their technical system in his town was overrun completely by students from the country. He wanted to know why they should strike a rate and why people from the country should come in. I pointed out to him that undoubtedly they did strike a rate but they were getting a pretty considerable Government grant to run their school and that the schools would be quite as costly and even more costly, if you took fees into account, if there were less pupils from the country. I quote his complaint as an evidence of the way in which, where you have technical schools in towns, people come to them from the neighbouring country. Where you have day schools in the towns—technical schools—fully fifty per cent. of those who attend come from the country districts. Naturally, of course, in the night time you have a larger attendance from towns. The day school caters for about two or three times the size of the population for which the night school caters. Connected with that, is the question of young people getting into the town and getting home again. The same eagerness on the part of the people to avail of this type of education shows in the increase, even in the last four or five years, in the number that attended the rural schools under the present system. In manual instruction the number increased from 2,500 to 4,500; in domestic economy from 4,600 to 8,000; in home industries from 900 to 1,200; in commerce from 900 to 1,400; and in other subjects from 1,300 to 1,500. There is eagerness on the part of the rural population to take advantage of this particular type of instruction. The difficulty, especially in dealing with the technical side of instruction, is that very often instructors and instructresses have a limited amount of time to spend in any district and they cannot go there often. That is one of the drawbacks.
Increased facilities are necessary, especially in subjects like domestic economy. Facilities of that kind are of great importance to the community if they are efficient and if they are availed of. The Technical Commission points out that existing facilities are altogether too meagre. They say in Paragraph 54, that they are on too small a scale in rural areas to produce anything like really effective results, naturally enough, because the extension of this system to the country was to a certain extent an afterthought following the original legislation. One of the witnesses emphasised very strongly the desire that people from country districts have to avail of the opportunities already at their disposal. Some people might say that as things exist at present, in view of the difficulties with which the system has to contend, it might be well either greatly to expand the system or to do away with it. That, however, is putting things in an extreme fashion. I should rather put it in a different fashion, namely, that if we are to get anything like an effective return for the money spent on these schemes, considerably more money will have to be spent on them. If you double the expenditure on the schemes you get greatly more than double the results. The provision of facilities which this Bill offers to a greater extent than other Bills, will always remain the principal thing. There are, of course, compulsory powers, but more important is the provision of facilities of which the people can avail.
I need not dwell on the importance of technical education so far as industries are concerned. I do not share the view, which some people seem to have, that technical education can create industries. It cannot do so. In fact, to do anything effective, technical education must be in close touch with existing industries. Where they are side by side the problem is to get them to help each other, one being now in advance, and the other advancing in turn. In all countries, schools are now asked to undertake tasks which up to the present were undertaken privately, either in the family or by private employers and companies. That is true of practically every country. I remember having an experience of that kind in Saxony, where there was a large factory making electrical instruments. Quite close to it—run as an ordinary technical school and used practically altogether by employees of the factory—was a technical school in which the apprentices in the factory served the first two years of their apprenticeship. Similarly, it has been pointed out in Prussia that things that used to be done in the homes, even in domestic matters, are no longer done there, and instruction in such matters is looked for in the schools. That is true, not only of Germany, but of countries nearer home. As the Commission put it in Paragraph 30, the current tendency in all modern industrial countries is to make the technical school fulfil a more definite function in the training for industry. In Paragraph 125 they state—I do not know whether the House is in sympathy with it, but we had better accept it as a fact —that the employer cannot afford to use the services of a highly-skilled and highly-paid workman for the purpose of training apprentices, and that this duty is devolving more and more on the technical school.
One of the drawbacks of the system in this country up to the present, one of the matters in which we have a considerable amount of lee-way to make up, is the question of closer connection between the actual industries of the country and the type of instruction given in technical schools. So far as technical education is concerned, what I said about continuation education holds good. Any compulsory powers given in regard to this Bill apply between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, but it is not suggested that technical education stops at the age of eighteen. In this connection the number is considerably less than in the case of continuation education. You might have in the case of trade classes in urban centres 20,000, and in rural classes on manual instruction 30,000. Those who are anxious to get an idea of the numbers in connection with the different trades will find the reference to that matter in the second volume of the Census useful. There you have the groupings of people according to trades. I do not intend now to give the actual numbers. The number of textile workers, for instance, is given at 7,000. The different trades vary to a considerable extent, just as they vary in the case of technical education in the narrow sense. I am not speaking of general education in continuation schools, but of preparation for the different trades and of the more intimate instruction that might be given to apprentices in different trades. It varies considerably as between business and business.
There are a number of businesses in which the amount of technical skill required is very small, but in which a large number are engaged and, on the other hand, there are others in which a small number are engaged but in which the amount of technical skill required is considerable. As I say, I do not intend to deal with the actual numbers in these particular industries, but they are considerable. One of the things which the Bill proposes to do is to bring about a better articulation between continuation education and technical education. As I have already hinted, I look on that in itself as a considerable gain. It is only those in touch with the difficulties which technical schools have to encounter who can appreciate the importance of separating more clearly the problem of continuation education, on the one hand, and that of technical education on the other. This Bill proposes to do that. Where there has existed up to the present, owing to organic growth, a system which has grown beyond the actual Acts of Parliament enabling the system to operate, you had really a lack of system. If this Bill becomes law, we hope to introduce order where before there was a certain amount of inevitable confusion. We want to put each group where it belongs. I am quoting the Technical Commission report, not as an authority, but because very often it puts definitely and succinctly the views which I am anxious to put before the House.
Paragraph 44 states that many of the statements furnished to the Commission indicate that the attendance at evening commercial classes of immature students, not yet in employment, militates seriously against the general success of technical schools, and that the needs of such students should be supplied by the provision of suitable continuation education of a whole-time character. From the definite segregation of continuation education from technical education we hope to gain a considerable amount. As to how the schools should be run various views were put forward before the Commission. The majority of such views are, I think, in favour of retaining with qualifications the existing system of local committees. Some witnesses very decidedly and definitely were of the view that local committees were a nuisance, entirely wrong, incapable of doing right, and should be swept away. The abolition of such committees was, as I say, strongly urged by certain witnesses, but in this type of education I feel that close contact between those responsible for the running of the schools and local conditions is more necessary than any other conditions. In the matter of continuation education, but more so in the matter of technical education, industrialists are much more inclined to be influenced by local committees than by, for instance, officials of a department. That view was put clearly before me by a French expert on these matters, and what holds true in a strongly centralised country like France holds even more true in this country. One of the matters in which technical education in this country at present falls short of requirements is that there is not sufficient relation between the system and the neighbourhood which it purports to serve.
The local connection is more necessary in this type of education than elsewhere. Hence I agree with the views put forward by the Commission that these local committees should be retained. They are very strong in several portions of the report in pointing out that at present there is not that close relationship between the type of work done in the school and the particular needs of the neighbourhood. I hope that in future the committees will be more alive to that particular aspect of the situation.
The Committee, and here I agree with them, pointed out that the existing committees are altogether too large. Sometimes you have as many as 70 members in some of them. They do not all turn up when the business of the committee is to be done. There may be an occasional day or two on which you may have a very large attendance, but as a rule the attendance is nothing like as large as it might be. Now I believe in much smaller committees if effective work is to be done. The Commission suggests something like twelve. Ten or twelve might be enough to have present at a meeting, but I thought it would be well to increase it somewhat, because if you are to limit the number to twelve you will not get them all present. If you had a meeting of ten or twelve it can only be if you have a somewhat larger committee, and therefore we have somewhat enlarged the number which the Committee suggested. You want a small committee to do effective work and at the same time you want a committee which with normal attendance will give a sufficiently large number to be representative of the different interests.
Now as to the actual composition of the committees, that is a matter to which I have given some thought, and I am not, I confess, altogether satisfied with the provision in the Bill as it stands. However, we can debate that more fully afterwards. Originally I had the idea that full power might be left to the county council to select whom it liked on the committee, but then the House will recollect that we are giving the committee considerable powers. Within certain limits definitely fixed in the schedule we are giving the committee power to decide what the rate is. That being so, it was felt, seeing that the rating authority struck that rate within the limits set out in the schedule, that there ought to be a majority by compulsion, so to speak, of the members of the committee to represent the local rating authority. That did secure giving the control of the finances and keeping them to a large extent in the hands of the local rating authority. It has undoubtedly the drawback that it takes away in other respects the liberty of the council as to the type of person it should put on. The problem, however, is one of detail, and can be more fully debated afterwards. I should also like to call attention to a provision of which I hope liberal use will be made— the Vocational Committee's powers to appoint sub-committees—this especially where you have a large county, will be particularly useful for local areas. But one thing they could not pass on to the sub-committee would be the power of fixing the rate.
Now I come to the financial provisions in the Bill. Everybody admits, and the Commission are very clear on it, that the present finances are not adequate. They are insufficient. They are subject to conditions which, on the whole, had better be wiped away. That is to earn grants they must be earned in certain ways. As a result of the ways in which grants have been added to in the course of the last 30 years, that this system has been in existence there are several types of grants. You have, for instance, the local rate struck by the county council. You have then various types of grants coming from the Department of Education. Each authority, each committee gets a certain portion of the old endowment grant. Then there are attendance grants. Then there are bonuses on to teachers' salaries, and a couple of other types of grants that the committee itself may earn. That has led to a great deal of confusion and a great deal of waste of time also in keeping a rather complicated set of accounts. You have the evils that flow from lack of funds. You have the cramping effect that it has on the policy of the committee, and, occasionally, what you may call false developments. That is, the grant-earning side has been occasionally looked after more strongly than the real needs of the pupils of the district. That is inevitable.
Now what do we estimate the additional cost when the whole system is in operation? The Commission was definite that this system should be put into effect gradually. The whole cost might be £300,000, in addition to the present cost. If it takes 15 or 20 years to be put into existence by gradual expansion, that means a definite advance per year. From some of the criticisms that have appeared, the impression seems to have got abroad that it is my proposal that that additional sum should be levied off the rates. Nothing of the kind. At present the schemes are financed from the rates, and from the State. The additional expense will be borne by the rates and by the State. Fifty per cent. of the additional cost will be borne by the State. That system therefore of combined contribution by the rates and by the central authority will continue. I am speaking now of the additional cost. Next year the part borne by the State of the whole cost of technical education will be more than that borne by the local authority. Under the present Bill in the year 1945, 1947 or 1950, more than half the cost of continuation and technical education will continue to be borne by the State. Roughly speaking, spread over a number of years, our intention will be to contribute for the new development pound for pound for what is contributed locally for the extension.
There is a provision in the Bill, and here we followed the recommendations of the Committee, for a compulsory rate of 2d. for vocational education. That is for the country districts. There is a 3d. rate for the towns. In addition there is on the part of committees the power of striking a new rate, committees according to the Bill a majority of which must be members of the local rating authority or authorities. It is only gradually, however, that they will be allowed to advance to put any additional burdens on the rates. It cannot, stretching over a number of years, be at a greater pace than a farthing in the £ per year. They are not bound to strike that. They are given the option of striking that, but they cannot in any year go beyond the sum mentioned in the schedule. That is based on a sum arrived at by considering the rate of the new charge of a farthing per year.
We thought that gradual expansion absolutely inevitable or at least wise if we were to get a healthy working. That system of gradual expansion has been found extremely useful and productive of good results, for instance, in a country like Sweden. It is necessary gradually to feel our way as we go on and that is the reason from the purely educational point of view of the gradual nature of the grants allowed in the schedule. The House will notice that the special penny rate for Irish is absorbed. It does not mean that the effective work done for people over the age of 14 is to disappear. Nothing in the Bill suggests anything of the kind. As I have already indicated, education for adults is possible and though it may be necessary when a local body puts forward a scheme of continuation education as portion of a course to provide practical subjects still it will be possible, especially for those over a certain age, to attend any particular class or subjects. They can therefore attend certain courses and not attend others.
It is not suggested there should be anything in the nature of the primary school about the instruction given. It is meant in the continuation schools that the instruction should be such as would be suitable for people who have become to a certain extent adults. The Irish rate itself has gone up and down in the course of years. I am not saying the number attending Irish classes but the number of adults attending them has decreased. That at all events is the impression we have.
There are various other provisions in the Bill allowing the committees to make grants for purposes of continuation and technical education in their various districts, not merely to set up schools but in other ways to help continuation education. If Deputies will turn to paragraphs 29, 31 and 33 they will find provisions to that effect there. There is also a provision giving to the Government power to make grants to a school doing educational work of this type even though those schools are not run by local authorities, and there is a special section giving power to spend money for this type of education in the Gaeltacht. With regard to the compulsory powers of the Bill, as I said already, the important thing undoubtedly is the provision of increased facilities but a certain amount of compulsion is undoubtedly necessary. Compulsion will be extended gradually through the country.
However, it will be of such a nature in the country districts as not to interfere with the ordinary avocations of the farming community. Those who were here when we were dealing with the Compulsory School Attendance Bill for the primary schools will remember that Deputies emphasised very strongly the burden that would be imposed, even economically, on the farmer if we were to take away the wage-earning capacity of his son up to the age of fourteen. That difficulty had to be faced and the Compulsory School Attendance Act became effective up to the age of fourteen. It is a different matter when you are dealing with compulsion up to the age of sixteen. Here Deputies will notice that the powers of compulsion given to the Minister are strictly limited. In the country districts they will be limited to compelling attendance at a course of 180 hours. That does not mean that those who wish to do so cannot attend much longer, but the State cannot compel a person between 14 and 16 years to attend for longer than 180 hours per annum. In most of the Continental countries that is, generally speaking, the time that is required for compulsory attendance. In some States in Germany it is less. In one or two States—particularly in the strongly industrial States, such as Saxony, it might be more, but, generally speaking, that is the amount of time that is required. There is no reason why an attendance of, say, six hours per week for boys in winter should be allowed to interfere in any way with the help that they give on the farm. The classes can be so arranged, and ought to be so arranged, that there will be no clashing of interests. I suggest that a good plan would be for the boys to attend for their 180 hours in the winter months, the girls to attend in the summer months. That would leave the boys free for agricultural work in the summer months.
As regards technical schools—I pointed out already that we have not dealt with the question of apprenticeship in this Bill; that is altogether outside the scope of our Department—a certain amount of compulsion is advisable, too. It was generally recognised by the Commission that compulsion, to be successful here, should only be carried through with the good will and advice of those engaged in the different industries. Hence provision is made in the Bill that where 180 hours' attendance at a technical school or to receive technical instruction of a certain kind is deemed advisable, the employers and employees in the trade concerned must be consulted. The Commission recommended compulsory powers, and these are the compulsory powers we have adopted.
There is one important recommendation of the Commission which we are not putting into effect either in this Bill or in the Apprenticeship Bill. That is recommendation No. 18. In paragraph 115 they say:—
We recommend that attendance at a whole-time school should be provided in urban areas for all young people between fourteen and sixteen years who are not in employment. Exemption from obligation to attend whole-time schools should be granted only to those engaged in approved employment.
We had that provision, in general terms, included in the original draft of the Bill. When we considered how it could be implemented, we found that we were faced with considerable difficulties. I have not definitely decided against it. If anybody can show how it can be carried through, I am quite willing to reconsider our position. We found that even if we did put in a provision of this kind it would be practically impossible to administer it effectively. That, apparently, is the experience of a large number of other countries. Nobody will deny that the recommendation aims at something which is highly desirable. I think we all will be in agreement on that point. Yet I know of no country in Western Europe where it was found possible to make such provision effective. I would ask Deputies to consider the difficulties that we would be faced with if we tried to enforce that provision. Take the case of a young lad of fourteen years of age who leaves a national school. I take it for granted that in this country, whether we like it or not, the question of raising the school-leaving age to fifteen or sixteen for all children is out of the question. To make it impossible for young people at the age of fourteen to get into employment is not economically feasible at the moment. Can you make it compulsory for young people of fifteen or sixteen years who are not in employment to attend school? The actual recommendation in the Report is that it should be made compulsory for those not in approved employment. We would have considerable difficulty in scheduling approved employments. Deputies should remember that this provision would have to be administered in a court. We would have to satisfy the court that there had been a definite evasion of the law—that the law had been broken. We would find it difficult to schedule the different types of employment that would be regarded as "approved employment." To carry out this recommendation, even in one city, would mean a tremendous increase in our supervisory staff. Furthermore, a great deal of the employment that young people get is casual. In the present economic conditions, can we prevent young people taking casual employment? If we cannot prevent young people taking casual employment what would be the result? They may be in employment for a month or two months; they go out of employment and are compelled to attend school in accordance with this recommendation. Then they go back to employment and, again, get out of employment. Their attendance at school would be necessarily irregular and would do them little good. Even from that point of view, it would be impossible to make the Act really effective. No policing system that we could afford would be able to enforce an Act of that kind. Those were some of the difficulties that—greatly against my will—induced me not to seek that more extended power for the city districts under this Bill. If, during the debates in Committee, it can be shown that the problem can be dealt with, I am quite willing to give favourable consideration to the matter. At present I find it extremely difficult to see how such a provision could be carried out. The provision was in some of the original drafts of the Bill and it was with the greatest reluctance that I dropped it. I fully admit the desirability of it if it could be made effective. I am convinced it could not be made effective, and I do not know of any country in which a stipulation of that kind has been made effective. We have examples of attempts to compel attendance at classes of that haphazard type but they are not encouraging. So far as general provisions are concerned, there is power under Section 24 of the Compulsory School Attendance Act of 1926 given to the Minister to deal with a problem of that sort, if capable of being dealt with administratively. But the question we have to consider here is not the desirability of putting in a clause of this kind, but the possibility of implementing it and working out the details.
When the School Attendance Act, in the course of the next three or four years, has got a full trial—I will deal later with how far it has been successful during its existence, but it is apparent to anybody who considers the matter that it will require a few more years before it can be tried out —there might be something to be said for quite a different proposition —how far it would be advisable, especially in towns, to compel attendance at school, up to the age of fifteen, of those pupils who have not reached the sixth standard. That is a different proposition. It can be properly considered only when we see what the full fruits of the present School Attendance Act are. We have already put burdens on the parent. In this Bill, we are putting further burdens on the parent, the employer and the country. We do not think we have gone beyond the limits of what is desirable or necessary. We think that if we were to suggest that there should be no employment of young people up to the age of fifteen or sixteen years, we should be going beyond what the parent or the employer could be asked to bear, or what the industries of the country could be asked to bear at the moment. It would, perhaps, be desirable in itself, but it would not be feasible at the moment, at all events. What I do rely on more is the provision in the towns of facilities for continuation education for those who wish to avail of them.
One of the drawbacks in the existing system is that there is no proper provision for buildings. Very often it was only in a sort of by-way that money was collected to establish or extend Technical Schools. Technical Instruction Committees, as they exist at present, have no power to borrow money for building works of a permanent nature. It is true the local authority might borrow, but the only security it could give would be the very limited rate it is entitled to strike at the present time. We propose to remedy that. It will be possible for the Committee to borrow on the security of the fund—which will be in a healthier financial condition than it has been up to the present— into which the local rate is paid, and to which the Government will contribute its quota. Therefore, indirectly the Government will be contributing its quota to the cost of building. It ought to be possible, in that way, for the question of suitable buildings to be met.
We are looking for a system that will give healthy results. This Bill has met with a certain amount of criticism because it is not revolutionary enough. Personally, I do not consider that an objection. We want to reform a system that has done a considerable amount of work in order to enable it to do a great deal more work. We claim that we have not introduced anything new in the nature of control in educational matters in this country. The future will bring forward problems that this Bill has not foreseen. But when these problems come will be the time to deal with them. However. I have dealt with the general problem and with the spirit of the Bill, and I respectfully ask that the Bill be given a second reading.
