Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 27 Mar 1962

Vol. 194 No. 4

Committee on Finance. - Vote 32—Secondary Education.

Aire Oideachais (Pádraig Ó hIrighile)

Tairigim:

Go ndeonófar suim fhorlíontach nach mó ná £102,000 chun íoctha an mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31ú lá de Mhárta, 1962, le haghaidh Meánoideachais, lena n-áirítear Deontas Tuarastail na Múinteoirí, Deontas Ceannsraithe, Tuarastal Breisitheach do Mheánmhúinteoirí agus Deontas do Chiste Pinsin na Meánmhúinteoirí.

This Supplementary Estimate is necessary to meet the cost of increases in the incremental salaries for recognised secondary teachers and for the payment of supplementary allowances to probationary teachers. The increase in the incremental salaries has been accorded with effect form the 1st November, 1961 and arises from the implementation of a report from the Secondary Teachers' Arbitration Board. The Arbitration Board met on 23rd February and 2nd March, 1962. The findings of the board have been approved by the Government and the cost is estimated to be £370,000 for a full year. The amount which will be payable in this financial year will be £90,000.

The Supplementary Estimate provides also for the payment of a supplementary allowance to probationary teachers in accordance with a scheme which was introduced with effect from 1st August 1961. The supplementary allowance at the rate of £200 is payable to a teacher during his probationary year of teaching service. The additional cost of this scheme is estimated at £50,000 in a full year. The cost in the present financial year would, accordingly, be £24,000. The total sum payable in the current financial year on the incremental salary increases and the supplementary allowance, is estimated at £114,000. Due, however, to anticipated savings generally in the subhead, the net additional cost is estimated at £102,000.

Mr. P. O'Donnell

This Supplementary Estimate is one that is acceptable to the House. It is merely to pay to secondary teachers principally the increase of salary awarded to them. It is one which we accept. There is one matter to which I should like to refer. A number of new lay secondary schools are being established throughout rural Ireland, particularly in the smaller towns. I understand that in relation to a teacher who wishes to establish such a school the expenses of paying teaching staff are borne by himself for the first year. I stand subject to correction on this matter but I do know for a fact that during the first year he is at a considerable financial disadvantage. It may be a probationary period and the Minister and his Department may be quite right in refraining from paying such a teacher or headmaster capitation or salary during that year. Should that school prove efficient and should that teacher continue with his secondary school, then such arrears should be paid to him, if not in a lump sum, then spread over a period. I am not too certain of the mechanics of it but, perhaps, the Minister knows what I am referring to and he might let us know the present position.

In Gaeltacht areas grants are now given for the establishment of such secondary schools. I do know very good teachers, teachers displaying initiative, who are refraining from establishing such schools as a result of this financial loss which they would sustain in their first year. Perhaps the Minister would look into that and tell us what the position is. If he can rectify the matter between now and the main Estimate later on at the beginning of the financial year we would be very glad.

Mr. Dillon

I should like to ask two questions. One arises from the situation that will come upon us as a result of our increasing participation in the Common Market of Europe, that is, the availability of teachers of modern European languages. I understand that at present if you get a French woman to teach French, although she is a graduate of a French University, she is not eligible for incremental salary here. Perhaps one of the most urgent things necessary in our secondary school system today is to provide greater access not only to the capacity to read and write Continental languages but also to speak them.

Obviously there is a special advantage in many cases of having a teacher who is a native speaker of the language concerned. The children will be furnished with an adequate speaking knowledge of the language with which they can subsequently go abroad in order to improve their linguistic capacity. I should be glad to know if a school employs Continental graduates of a sufficient standard whether such persons should not have available to them the ordinary increments which qualified secondary teachers here ordinarily enjoy.

The second point I want to raise with the Minister is this: I understand that it is becoming progressively more difficult to get science teachers in secondary schools for the reason that science graduates are very eagerly sought at present by industry both at home and abroad. As I understand it the present difficulty of science graduates is that they cannot qualify for increments if they do not take out the Higher Diploma in Education. It would be a desirable thing, in view of the acute shortage of teachers in this category, to waive the requirement of the Higher Diploma in Education. I do not propose to dwell on the value of that qualification at this stage of a Supplementary Estimate but I do suggest that it is hard enough to get science teachers at all at the present time and that it might be a very material help to schools trying to get good men and women to teach science to have science teachers exempted from the obligation of taking the Higher Diploma in Education. I should be glad if the Minister would consider those two proposals with a view to improving secondary educational facilities in all our schools.

Mr. Byrne

I should like to support Deputy Dillon in regard to the point he made about the scarcity of science teachers and to take issue with the Minister on the reply he gave to me in the House last week in connection with the eligibility of Irish science graduates returning from Britain for incremental salary in this country. The Minister seems to be convinced that the scarcity of science teachers is due entirely to the competitive position as between teaching and industry. It is a fact, which cannot be controverted, that there are Irish science graduates teaching science in British schools and that there are science graduates from Dublin, Cork and Galway teaching science in the Six Counties who would be glad to come back here if they were not placed at a considerable financial disadvantage by doing so. The number I am speaking of may not be very large but I am sure the Minister will agree that even six such teachers brought back here would serve a good purpose.

On the general question of the ineligibility of teachers with British certificates or, indeed, any foreign service, particularly British service, because there are so many of our graduates in Britain, I would urge on the Minister the desirability of not penalising those of our graduates who have been compelled to emigrate in order to earn a living and who, after five, six, or ten years abroad, are anxious to come home. At present, when they do so, they have to start at the bottom of the scale. I can see the Minister's point in relation to adding to the number of jobs, but it seems to me rather parsimonious to rely so very much on first year graduates from our universities who will be paid less in the early years than would those coming back from Britain.

As far as the laws made by this Parliament are concerned, it is an anomalous situation that the Department of Education should accord a degree of recognition to Partition which is not in accord with the principles laid down in our Constitution. Some of the religious orders operating secondary schools in the Republic also operate schools in the Six Counties. That is true in particular of the Christain Brothers. Under their system of administration, they periodically interchange teachers as between one school and another. That is something which cannot be done now as between the Six Counties and the Twenty-Six. I shall avail of every opportunity presenting itself to protest against that unconstitutional action by the Department of Education.

On this question of incremental salary, the Minister told me not 20 minutes ago that there had been some misunderstanding about the recognition of teaching service in the emergent countries of Africa and that those who hoped that incremental salaries would be available to all teachers, including the members of religious orders, with suitable experience, were labouring under a misapprehension. The Minister has resolved a doubt on that issue at least. I can assure the Minister—I am sure he is aware of it —that a number of people are grievously disappointed by the fact that this concession is not being made available to members of religious orders. It seems to me rather churlish to take for granted in this fashion the services rendered by our missionary priests and nuns.

It is a fact that to a very large extent secondary education in this country depends on these good people and, even more significantly, depends on the salaries paid, in theory, to individual members of religious orders for their services, but which are, of course, made available in fact for the general education administered by the orders concerned. In so far as I believe, as do many other Deputies, that the financing of secondary education is very much neglected in this country, I feel very strongly that it is wrong to deprive these people of the salary scale made available to lay teachers.

Mr. McQuillan

I should like to make just one point in connection with the Minister's discourteous remarks here last week when he was asked about the situation in relation to Irish teachers from this part of the country who teach in the Six Counties. His reply and his attitude on that occasion show up, to my mind, at any rate, the hypocrisy in Government circles on the question of Partition from the point of view of education. We have the extraordinary position that the Minister admitted last week that an Irish teacher who goes to Ghana, Nigeria, or Sierra Leone—those were the three countries he mentioned —will have service in these countries recognised here for incremental purposes. If an Irish teacher, who cannot obtain employment in the Twenty-Six Counties, goes to Belfast to teach there, that teaching experience is not recognised for incremental or superannuation purposes in this part of the country. That is a disgraceful situation and I do not think too much publicity can be given to it.

I do not think the Irish public are aware of the fact that there is in the Department of Education an actual barrier erected against the Six Counties and that a system of partition exists in one of the most important fields in which there should be the closest co-operation and communication.

Mr. O'Donnell

Not in the recruitment of staff.

Mr. McQuillan

It should not be a question of having to wait until our abject appeal for admission to the Common Market is either accepted or rejected. If we are accepted, it is presumed Partition is likely to come to an end. Here is an opportunity in which we can break down the existing barrier, inviting co-operation from the authorities in the Six Counties in the field of education. I should like to support Deputy Byrne on one aspect, though I am more concerned with a wider aspect than the teaching orders. Approximately every three years, or at the outside, every six years, the teaching staffs in the Christian Brothers' schools are transferred from one foundation to another. A Brother who has been teaching in Belfast and is transferred here will not have his teaching experience there taken into consideration for incremental or superannuation purposes. The fact is that Brothers teaching in the Six Counties cannot be transferred to this part of the country. They might as well be teaching in Timbuctoo when it comes to the Six Counties.

Why should we put on this air of hypocrisy about civilising the people of Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone? Why can we not look a little nearer home and give our own people an opportunity to teach in their own country with the same facilities as we are prepared to accord them apparently when they go abroad? The hypocrisy is shown up all the more when we remember that clerical teachers are not given these incremental bonuses or attractive salary scales because they have done teaching abroad. This is an attempt—how the idea evolved I do not know—to attract people to go to these countries. If the Minister is really serious, then he should allow these teachers to go to every country. There is just as much scope in South America as there is in Africa. I do not know what the actual connection is with some of these countries mentioned by the Minister, but we would be far better off, and there would be far more respect for us, if we sent trade ambassadors to these countries in an effort to find a suitable market for the produce we cannot get rid of here at the moment.

The Minister is a young man and he should be one of the first to bring about the change so badly needed in his Department's attitude on this issue of partition in education. There was not much use in the past talking to the old fogies sitting on those benches for the past 35 years because they had all gone past the stage of thinking of anything except their lunch, their tea and their dinner. Surely he, as a newcomer, is not prepared to fall into the old routine and take the bad advice of people who are still thinking in terms of the stone age period.

Dr. Hillery

I have tried to explain to Deputies this question of the recognition of service abroad. Generally speaking up to last year we did not recognise service abroad because we did not have to attract teachers from abroad. We had a sufficient number of teachers of our own. An individual teacher teaching abroad might like to come home, but if he did come home, a post would not be created for him but he would take it from another man who would have to go away, so it was not really to the advantage of the country to recognise service abroad generally. An apparent advantage to an individual would be a disadvantage to another individual because we did not have an insufficiency of teachers.

Recognition of service in the countries mentioned by Deputy McQuillan was given at the request of missionaries in those countries, and the leaders of the emerging countries who wanted lay teachers to go there—lay teachers employed not here but elsewhere. To make it more attractive to those lay teachers to go to these emerging countries than to another country, I made the concession of allowing them a higher position on the incremental scale, when and if they returned to teach in Ireland. It was a concession with a purpose: the purpose of getting lay teachers to go to these emerging countries, not to give a motive to the priests, nuns and brothers who were already there, motivated by their missionary vocation to go to those countries. Again, if you look at it from the point of view of an individual, there seems to be discrimination and that is why I am glad of the opportunity of explaining that our motive was to attract lay teachers and not missionary teachers who were already attracted there.

The other areas which I recognised were certain European countries: France, Spain, Italy and Germany, and that was for our own advantage, to give us teachers with a proficiency in the languages of those countries. We give recognition to teaching service in a country where the language the teachers learn is the vernacular in order that we will have teachers proficient in those languages. The overall question of recognition of service anywhere and everywhere abroad raises an awful lot of difficulties. It is being examined, as I have told the House, but my first care must be what is best for the educational system here. I do not intend to let it lie. It is being examined and will be constantly examined.

Deputy Dillon's suggestion about native speakers of foreign languages being prepared to teach here might have some attraction, but native speakers of a language are not necessarily always the best teachers of the language. What I have done to date has been to get teachers and try to make them proficient in languages. As has already been announced, one of the biggest teaching bodies, the Christian Brothers, are making arrangements to have teachers trained in the teaching of languages. I may say that the whole question is being examined continuously. It is regarded as urgent and already some steps have been taken, but my mind is not closed to other suggestions.

There is a scarcity of science teachers in every country in the world. Science graduates are employed even before they get their degree. They are snapped up by industry and at the moment I am trying to work out some system of attracting science graduates to teaching. It is very difficult to compete financially with industry and, indeed, industry has other attractions as well. I am not in a position to make a statement at the moment as to what my intentions are, but I am trying to work out some way of attracting science graduates to teach here in Ireland.

Deputy P. O'Donnell mentioned the probationary year. I think he meant the first year of establishment of a school. A school is established about a year before it is inspected for recognition. Once it is recognised, the salaries are paid retrospectively, but we cannot pay money until a school has been examined and found suitable for recognition. The probationary period mentioned in the Supplementary Estimate is the first year's secondary teaching of a graduate with his H.D.E. In his first year, he is usually paid by the college alone. The salary has been found to be unattractive and inadequate. For that reason, and to attract people to stay at home and teach in the schools here, I brought in this payment of a grant during the probationary year. It is not the year of establishment of a school, but the first year of the teacher's teaching life.

Vote put and agreed to.