The time remaining for this motion is 25 minutes.
Private Members' Business. - Extension of School Leaving Age—Motion (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:
That Dáil Éireann is of opinion that the period of compulsory education should be extended to the age of 15 years, and that the child, having passed through Standard VI, should be given these three alternatives: (1) to enter a secondary school, (2) to undertake a wholetime course in a vocational school, (3) to remain on in a national school.— (Deputies Browne and McQuillan.)
On the last occasion, I was asking the Minister, before coming down on the side of the critics or on the side of those who feel that everything is all right in the Department of Education and that we have made great strides and achieved many successes, to keep an open mind for some time longer. I would ask him to accept that, while there may be critics who are hostile to the Department of Education, they are very few. He should take it that most of us here, at any rate, are concerned only with the improvement of the educational system so that the nation as a whole may benefit. Certainly, that is the background of any criticism that I or Deputy McQuillan offered here.
Before the Minister dismisses these critics, I would ask him to consider the status of many of those who have criticised our educational system in recent months. I would ask him, before picking on one point in their argument and launching a full-scale attack on that point—forgetting other points in the argument—not to ignore the valid points that have been made, even if he can prove that one or more relatively minor points, or even major ones, have been proved wrong.
Points were made by Mr. Flood, Director of the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards, in an article in which he made a charge about "the challenge we have failed to meet"; Father Reginald Walker, a Holy Ghost Father on "schools that do not play fair with the pupils"—they do not get the brand of education they deserve, too much cramming, too little education; Prof. O'Meara on a question to which I referred already. He made very serious criticisms of the whole secondary education system and particularly of the curriculum.
There is also the recent statement by Father Hilary Lawton, S.J., Rector of Clongowes. I think his comments must be considered in the context of the general criticism that has been levelled against the Department of Education over some months. He said on 26/10/'59 that it was no surprise that uneasiness had been felt by many about the educational system and he went into great detail with which I shall not now worry the House. I merely mention these names as names of responsible persons, persons of some standing in the community. I hope the Minister will allow these people to stand on their merits and to be associated with the comments we have made in trying to re-emphasise to him that all is not well in the Department of Education.
One of the frightening things the Minister might say in reply to this debate is that the overall picture is good and that we should acknowledge that the educational system has been expanded to cater for our needs. It has not been expanded sufficiently rapidly. Substance is given to that contention by what the Taoiseach himself recently said when he told us he proposed to enlarge considerably the scope of secondary education scholarships for children. That is without mentioning another point in our motion—the question of opportunities to attend Universities. These opportunities are negligible at present for the children of the under-privileged, that is, the vast majority of our people. I think 60 or 70 per cent. of our workers are earning less than £9 or £10 per week. The father of the average family of three, four or five children, no matter how talented or gifted a child may be, finds it very difficult to keep the child in a secondary or vocational school.
In regard to points raised by Deputies Corish, Lindsay and others who said that the real sacrifice was not the fee—which because of the sacrifice of so many Orders, the Marist Brothers and the Christian Brothers for example—are relatively small. The sacrifice is the family's sacrifice of the income the child could get and the cost of feeding, clothing, housing and entertainment, books and equipment and, on top of that, the fees. All these make up the real consideration which the father of a family faces in trying to educate his children.
The comparative figures were questioned—the fact that certain countries spend so much on secondary education. Russia was cited as spending £7; the U.S., £5; England, £2; and ourselves 10/-. These figures come from a world survey of education by UNESCO. Various figures were put forward by the Minister to show that our figure should probably be something in the region of 29/6 or something considerably more than is cited here.
I should like to put it to the Minister that this survey was carried out by a most responsible world authority and that the figures were compiled from figures supplied by his Department. Consequently, if these figures are incorrect and misrepresent the figures in Ireland, then I think the Minister and his Department are responsible to the country.
Would the Deputy permit me to explain?
I fear I have not much time.
In a private note.
I have only 20 minutes and I have a lot of ground to travel. If the Minister would explain it later, I should be very grateful. We should be careful in comparing these figures or getting satisfaction from comparing them with the next lowest figures, Great Britain's, because they are "nothing to write home about." I believe Britain is only relatively advanced and has only a relatively progressive society. I should like to see our conditions as good as Britain's, but I want to see them much better. There are more progressive countries such as Sweden and New Zealand and, particularly, Russia and the United States. We should not be satisfied with the relatively low figure for Britain.
The suggestion was made that we should take into consideration the comparative wealth of these countries. Let us also take into consideration the comparative responsibilities of the United States, Russia, Great Britain and these other countries which have just come through a most devastating war, involving tremendous expenditure, tremendous waste and tremendous loss of life. At the moment they are involved in a most wasteful cold war in which each of them is building up fantastically expensive weapons to hurl at each other. All these things involve a vast outlay. We have not those vast responsibilities. We have not to pay for reparations and loss in war. Thank God, we are not involved in this idiotic cold war at the present time.
We must not look for these escape clauses. I believe it is because of our failures on the social and particularly the economic front that we are in the very unhappy position we are in today. In relation to these figures, I should like it to be known that the aims of UNESCO were laid down on the assumption that they were speaking to a multi-national society. They endeavoured as far as possible to see that there was as much uniformity as they could get in the standards they laid down.
Then they defined secondary education. Unless I am wrong, this is the definition which they gave of secondary education:
Although the line of demarcation between primary and secondary education is not always clear—it is, nevertheless, useful to assess the amount and kind of schooling usually given to children beyond the ages of compulsory education. In this section we shall assume secondary education to include all type of schools including vocational and teaching training schools above the primary education level and below the level of higher education as understood in each country.
I understand that that is University education. That seems to me to be a reasonably clear definition of what they meant by secondary education. It covers all forms of education, vocational, secondary, technical and teacher training establishments. They made that point clear. Their terms of reference seem to me to be crystal clear. I should like to know why it is that in the light of that, the Department appear to have been misrepresented by the figures they supplied.
They gave the forms on which all the information is supplied either directly in response to queries or, alternatively, as a result of the perusal of Government departmental documents circulated by the Department of each country. I think that we are owed some explanation in relation to these figures.
Another point the Minister raised was in relation to the school building programme. He says it was excellent. I do not think it was. The problem has been there for the past 40 years. I do not think it should be there to anything like the present extent after 40 years. The late Deputy Moylan pointed out in 1955—that is, four years ago—that there were 1,000 schools unfit for occupation. In 1958, in reply to a question, I was told that there were 821 national schools in need of replacement and 203 needed substantial repairs, that is, a total of 1,024.
I do not see why the Department cannot state the number of schools they require to build in a reasonably short period of time—a period of 10 years at the most. At the rate of building at the moment, the redundancy rate is about 50 per year. At the best, the Minister now boasts that he will have at least 100 this year. That gives him a rate of 15 new schools each year with 1,000 to provide. That is the situation when the building trade is looking for work and delighted to get work, if it can. The Minister should institute a dynamic policy in order to get rid of this persistent figure of uncompleted schools and schools unfit for use.
The figure for the Board of Works in respect of uncompleted work has risen from £1,900,000 in 1953 to £3,300,000 in 1957 and £3,200,000 in 1958. That is in respect of work for which money was allocated and which the Board of Works did not complete. Some other figures will be of interest. I think they should help to convince the Minister that the work has not been as spectacular as he appears to think.
In 1930—29 years ago—there were 5,378 primary schools. These are UNESCO figures. In 1954, there were 4,872 schools. There were 13,659 teachers in 1930; there were 13,144 in 1954. There were roughly 509,000 pupils per 37 teachers in 1930 and 496,000 per 38 teachers in 1954. The pupil teacher ratio in 1930 was 37 and in 1954, it was 38. It has gone up and the building of schools has gone down. The teacher pupil ratio has gone up, so that the Department of Education has been dealing with a problem which has been getting smaller, but even in that position they cannot keep up with the demand for newer and better buildings for children.
Other interesing figures are, I think, those in relation to expenditure here and expenditure in Northern Ireland. In 1954, £14.8 million was spent by the Department and in Northern Ireland, £10.9 million. The expenditure per head in the Republic in 1954 was £5 and £7.9 in Northern Ireland. It is quite clear to me at any rate that there is plenty of room for very much greater expansion in the building programme in the Department of Education.
I hope that the Minister will use his very powerful position to impress on the Government the need to make very much more rapid progress than that which we have seen in the past few years, when the net increase was about 50 schools per year.
The Minister raised another point. He was particularly proud of the teacher position. We have no shortage of teachers for the reason that we have a very high pupil teacher ratio because of the emergency action of the previous Minister for Education, Deputy J. Lynch, who brought back married women teachers. It is debatable whether that should have been done. There is a good case against doing it. It was an emergency action taken by the Minister to meet an emergency demand for additional teachers. You have all this alleged plenitude of teachers, no shortage of teachers, because of the fact that the average number of pupils per teacher in the Dublin county borough, for instance, was 47 in 1955-56. The average in England is 32; in Scotland, 29; and in the Six Counties, 32. In Dublin county borough, it is 47 and the average for the whole country is 38.
If the Minister were to accept the recommendations of the Council of Education, what he should be doing is building enough schools, providing enough teachers, in order to reduce the pupil teacher ratio to 30. That would require a further 3,000 to 4,000 new teachers. That is the measure of the shortage. In order to provide that number of teachers, he would have to increase the output from the training colleges by some fabulous amount. The present position is that about 500 teachers are produced per year, which would give a net increase of 100 teachers, because of the number who retire each year. In order to reduce the pupil teacher ratio to 30, which is the recommended number, you need, say, 3,000 new teachers. At the rate of 100 a year, I do not know how long it would take to solve the problem in that way. There is also the consideration that there are 13,000 teachers, approximately, of which number 3,000 are untrained and 60 per cent. of these have been untrained and teaching for ten, 11 or 12 years. If the Minister is satisfied with that record, then he is very easily satisfied.
The world is agreed on the question of the pupil teacher ratio. Again, on this question, the World Survey on Education says:
"It is probable, however, that ratios showing an average of more than 35 pupils for each teacher indicate a serious depressing factor on the quality of education received by the majority of the pupils."
That is on page 22. The only qualification they make is this:
"Large classes up to 37 may not interfere with learning processes where the teachers are qualified and teaching aids such as television and motion pictures are used effectively."
We shall be waiting a long time for those, according to Ministers who were asked from time to time whether they would provide them or not. If you had these facilities, you could be allowed to have 37 pupils per teacher. As it is, there are 47 in the Dublin county borough and 38 in the rest of Ireland and the Minister is satisfied that there is no shortage of teachers and then there is some fatuous claim about our position being unique in the world.
I would ask the Minister to be good enough to accept that those of us who go to the trouble of giving some thought to this question of education do so, not in order to be destructive in any way, but in order to be helpful, in order to try to bring the matter to his attention and to penetrate through the minds of those who appear to be impervious to any new thought in the Department of Education. Our efforts are intended to see that the vast majority of the children are educated in schools fit for children to work in and for teachers to teach in.
The problems that are there for the Minister, if he wishes to deal with them, are the reduction in the size of the classes to workable units and the provision of school buildings in a reasonable time. It has been shown in other aspects of building programmes in this country that it is possible to plan a much faster rate of building than he or his Department have carried out over the years. Now that housing and hospitals are no longer a demand on the building trade, the Minister could greatly increase the speed of school building.
The curriculum is something I do not feel competent to discuss, but I am quite certain from reading up the subject that it very seriously needs complete reconsideration.
Then there is the most important question of scholarships. As I have said, and repeat, we think the least desirable thing to do is to keep a child on in the national school up to 15 years of age. We can see very little value in it. I have explained already why we do not believe that it is a very desirable thing. We hope it will not be done compulsorily. As a last resort, if the child can get no other form of education then we think he or she should be allowed to stay on in the national school doing, if possible, a secondary school course in the secondary top type of curriculum. We believe that the ideal arrangement in this modern technological age is that the child should go to a vocational or technical school to get a trade, skill or profession or to go to a secondary school and then, from the secondary school, to a university.
We particularly appreciate the Taoiseach's assurance that he will greatly extend the secondary school opportunities for children by scholarships for children of the class in which we are interested and we hope that that promise will be soon fulfilled. At the same time, we think that is still falling far short of the needs. Every child has the same rights and any child who is gifted by God, who has a talent, skill, or whatever it may be, should have the right in normal society to have that talent developed to the full. Our society, at the moment, as I said earlier, is a stratified, tiered society, in which education opportunity is restricted too much to the child who is fortunate enough to have wealthy parents.
The Minister is very fortunate in having what is probably the most important Department of State at his disposal, on which the whole future prosperity of the nation depends. I believe it is within his grasp to mould it so that he can provide, in the first place, a great measure of social justice for the majority of our children. He can, I think, pave the way for the ultimate prosperity of our society because it is difficult to know which came first, illiteracy or the poverty which dogged our society for so long.
Question put and agreed to.