Deputy Tully is in possession and has 41 minutes which he may use.
Estimates, 1980. - Vote 29: Office of the Minister for Education (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:
That a sum not exceeding £35,143,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December 1980, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Education (including Institutions of Science and Art), for certain miscellaneous educational and cultural services and for payment of sundry grants-in-aid.
—(Minister for Education.)
I want to raise a number of matters mainly dealing with primary and secondary education. My colleague, Deputy Horgan, has dealt at length with other matters and I think this is a field that needs to be dealt with very fully. Any comments I make will be about the Department as such and not about individuals, either the Minister or the Minister of State—nothing personal, because I have received nothing but courtesy from both the Minister and the Minister of State. That does not mean that all my replies have been satisfactory.
I begin by saying that I resent very much going to the trouble of writing a letter to the Department of Education on what I consider to be an important matter to me and my constituents and not receiving a reply. This is a matter that could not be allowed to pass without comment. It has happened only on one or two occasions but that does not excuse it. Secondly, I object to getting an acknowledgment from the Department to a query and after several weeks, not having received the further reply promised, get the same acknowledgment to my second letter and after several weeks get the same response to my third letter and my fourth letter. This is not good enough.
In one particular case I had to go to both the Minister of State and the Minister himself to get an answer. I got a reply which was satisfactory for the time being; I am still awaiting a final decision. I got a courteous reply and a type of apology from the Minister for what had happened. I also strongly object to the recent action of the Department when I put down a written question to the Minister. Written questions are put down not for the purpose of making political points or embarrassing the Minister but in order to get information. Not alone was the information I was given incorrect but in two cases it was gobbledegook, with words misspelled—from the Department of Education, mark you. On one occasion I wrote to the Minister and protested strongly at getting such a reply to a Parliamentary Question. In his reply I got no apology but I got the exact information which my original question sought. For this I am grateful to him but I do not believe that he or any of his officials should try to get away with what I describe as a gobbledegook reply aimed at putting me off. The question I am talking about was when I asked the Minister for Education if he had sanctioned a grant for the repair or replacement of the roof of Dunboyne Primary School, County Meath, and if not when he proposed to do so. The written answer on 4 March stated:
The question of a grant towards the cost of works to the roof will be considered when the necessary result has been received.
Let somebody tell me what that means. Somebody might consider that was smart. I did not, nor did the people who asked me to put down the question. The Minister on 7 March gave me in detail by letter the exact information sought in my original question which, in my opinion, should have been given in the first instance.
I do not want to waste any more time on this but Members of the House are entitled to be treated as such. They are the people who run the country, the people who elect a Government, and through them the Government govern the country. I am not prepared to accept something less than an ordinary reply to which one is entitled. I am not an unreasonable man; I have great respect for the civil service. I know they do tremendous work but if somebody wants to be smart I shall raise it on every possible occasion in this House.
Grants for the erection and repair of primary schools is a very important matter. At present there seems to be a slowdown in making the necessary money available to carry out repairs and build new schools, some of which were promised as far back as two years ago. I refer first to one I spoke about this day week at Abbeylands, Navan.
Navan is now a large and growing town with a tremendously increased child population. There are a number of very good schools there. I like the Navan schools. I went to school there myself—my secondary education was not, in fact, in Navan. They are doing very well. But a primary school is required in a new area. Every effort has been made to persuade the Department to make available the necessary permission to proceed with the school. It has been promised and promised. In fact there was a suggestion that it might be in use next September for the influx of new pupils. But there is still no permission to go ahead with it. When I asked for an oral answer here the Minister's answer was that there were some things to be cleared up and as soon as this was done it would be sanctioned and there would be no difficulty. I asked him specifically if any obstacles would be put in the path of having it started and he said: "Certainly not; you can be assured of that." I took his word for it. That was a couple of months ago. I understand there is still no progress made. This is wrong.
I note that in the local papers recently somebody expressed the opinion that it is not necessary for children to go to school at four years of age. Of course it is not necessary but it is generally found that those who say children should not go to school until the age of six send their own children to kindergarten or playschool. They ensure that their own children get the full amount of education. In the main I am talking about working class children, many of whom unfortunately do not go any further than the intermediate certificate, if indeed they go that far. I am told that approximately 50 per cent of children do not go much further than this stage because they leave when the legal age is reached. Many of them need to get a job in order to help the family or because their parents are ill.
I believe it is good for children to go to school at the age of four and that it is also good for the rest of the family, particularly for the mother. Families nowadays do not tend to be as big as in the past but there are still families with five or six young children and it will not help the other children if those aged four cannot go to school for another two years. The additional accommodation required is not available and may not even be available by September 1981. This is ridiculous and I would ask that an extra effort be made to have these schools sanctioned.
I asked a number of questions in this House some weeks ago about the number of schools sanctioned in Meath and about the number of places available, particularly in secondary schools. While the reply suggested that there was ample accommodation for children coming along, I am perfectly satisfied from my knowledge of local affairs that this is not the case and many of the secondary schools now have their full complement. While some pupils will be finishing school this year, this will not create enough vacancies. When I asked about the possibility of a secondary school in Dunboyne, I was told that there was ample accommodation in the other schools in the area. People with whom I have been working have carried out a survey and they are satisfied that at present there is not ample accommodation in these schools for those who are now attending them.
I know how tight money is and this matter has been referred to on a number of occasions during the past few weeks. I know that the Minister for Education cannot get all the money he requires and that he and the Minister of State are as anxious as I am that accommodation should be made available. That does not solve the problem. A promise was made that certain things would be done and it has not been carried out. Before the end of this year the situation will be a lot worse than it has been for a long time.
I live in St. Mary's parish in Drogheda and I know that a number of schools in Drogheda are crammed to the doors. Some children have had to go to Balbriggan where there was a small amount of accommodation. An effort has been made to get additional accommodation in St. Mary's Christian Brother's School but the only word I can use to describe what has been going on is "messing". This "messing" has not all been with the Department because the Brothers have not helped recently, though perhaps they thought they were helping. They have offered a different site on which the Department are not prepared to build. If the Department would agree to the building of a two storey school on the original site there would be ample accommodation, but some person within the Department thinks it would look better if it were a single-storey building and the two-storey building has not been sanctioned. Somebody will score points while this argument is going on, while children who require accommodation for the education to which they are legally entitled will have to do without it. The parents and teachers in the area have done a tremendous job in an effort to try to raise money and much money has been spent in attempting to repair the existing school. The Department gave a grant of £2,000 and much of the local fund for the new school was expended in trying to make the old school habitable. At least one of the classrooms is still leaking. If people would move out of their offices and see the actual situation they might adopt a more practical approach to primary and secondary education.
Far too many schools in County Meath and throughout the country are still using old pre-fabs which were given a life of 12 or 14 years about 20 years ago and are still in use. Everyone agrees that they should be replaced but the money is not being provided. They cannot be kept warm in the winter or kept in a condition which would make their use reasonable even in the summer. In many cases it is very little better than being out in a field. We may blame anybody we like but ultimately we come back to the Government who must realise that the priority of making money available for this type of education should come before the purchase of an executive jet or the creation of five new Ministers of State. The Government have their priorities wrong. If we cannot get additional money, then the money we have must be spent in a better way. I do not suppose that these pre-fabs are worth very much money. In the few cases where extra accommodation has been built these pre-fabs have been left lying idle. It might be a good idea to sell them to local football clubs or sporting organisations who might be prepared to accept conditions which we should not ask children to accept.
With regard to school books, is there any reason why children who keep their books well should not be able to hand them on to a brother or sister who is moving into the class which they are vacating? Why must the parents purchase entirely new books? Is it not true that this is a racket? The Department must face up to it and give appropriate instructions for another issue of the same book as was used the previous year. Somebody is making money from the publication of these books and I am sure it is a big industry. I have seen children come home looking for sums between £5 and £15 for new books and the old books, which I and the parents feel they could use, have to be thrown to one side. There is something radically wrong. When we talk of free education we seem to forget that books are not free. They are very expensive, as are sports gear and everything the child has to buy. If a child cannot afford these things he or she is lesser than the other children. Children are very sensitive and children can be very cruel.
Some instructions should be issued regarding the supervision of children in playgrounds. In every playground there are one or two children who are bullies. This makes children anxious to stay away from school. They are afraid to go when some children, even smaller than they are, abuse or annoy them, particularly when there is no supervision. Many schools attempt to provide supervision but they pass off as horse-play something which has an effect on a sensitive child. I have had a number of complaints from parents. I would like to put this on record. Children are far more anxious to go to school now than they were in my time. Normally children like going to school and they should not be prevented from going by some little brat, boy or girl, who has the making of a sadist in later life. The Department should take notice of that.
The question of punishment in schools seems to have died down, but there are still teachers who punish children for not knowing their lessons. It is wrong for a teacher who is unable to do his or her job to take it out on the child, and particularly the slow child, by slapping him or her. As I said earlier, children can be very cruel and when they see this being done it is not very long before they lay on the punishment themselves.
I would like to refer to the school at Athlumney which is being used for mildly mentally and physically handicapped children. This was started a few years ago by a priest in the parish, with the co-operation of the local nuns who had a laundry which they were no longer using and which they converted. They now have quite a good school where approximately 25 children are being trained by two teachers. They are doing extraordinarily well, but for some reason both the Department of Health and the Department of Education find all the excuses in the world for not giving them the grants to which they are entitled.
Some time ago I raised a query about a grant which was refused because of the title. It is not a problem. The school belongs to the diocese. Nobody will pick it up and take it away. The school is still there, and the money is needed. Handicapped children in that school are not getting the attention or the equipment to which they are entitled because the Department have not given a grant which the Department admit is due to them. Quite a number of parents, organisers in the area, chambers of commerce, trades councils, and so on, have gone out of their way to assist in providing the money. That is not the way it should be done. It is grand to see contributions being made by private individuals, but the primary responsibility rests with the Department of Education and that Department should provide the money which is owed and which has not been paid. There is no point in saying it will be paid. When? If there is no money the school will have to close. That would be a tragedy.
I should like to pay great tribute to those who teach mentally and physically handicapped children in Navan and in schools throughout the country. In residential schools this is done by members of religious orders. Many people seem to forget that but for the fact that the religious orders took over the education of Irish children many years ago education would be in a much worse state than it is. It is only fair that this should be said. Because of a lack of vocations and because they have other things to do they are dropping out and others are taking over. Perhaps that is just as well. It is wrong that so many people should be prepared to forget what I just said. When they were prepared to do it for nothing it was all right and people did not object. Certain people would like to object now when they are getting the same payment as others, and they are entitled to that payment.
Recently there has been talk about not teaching religion in schools. People are entitled to send their children to whatever school they wish. There is no reason why we should not have a school which would cater for all religions and no religion, but it is essential that teachers are available to teach children the basics of the religion to which their parents belong. Some people say we should wait until they are 18 or 21 years of age and let them make up their own minds. That is a lot of cod. They are not allowed to wait until they are that age to make up their minds about many other things. In a country which is basically Christian they should be taught at least the Christian ethic.
The time has come when we must say Christians have rights too. People who are non-Christians, people who do not believe in any religion, seem to think they are the only people who have rights and that their rights must take precedence over the rights of everybody else. That is wrong. It is my personal view that parents are entitled to send their children to the school of their choice, let it be Catholic, Protestant or what have you, but they should receive instruction in the religion to which their parents belong.
Apparently there is trouble at present about adult education teachers. I do not know what the situation is elsewhere but in County Meath apparently they have been offered a new travelling rate of 5p per mile which does not apply unless the journey is more than ten miles. I wonder if the people who made that order are paid in that way. Do they get 5p per mile only after they have travelled ten miles? That is a good question.
Some teachers who contracted to work at a specified rate for the preChristmas term were paid at the new rate for this work. The travel allowance is completely out of line with the present estimated cost of running a car. I run a car myself and therefore I know that the cost of petrol has quadrupled over a short period. People using cars on short journeys find that the cost has gone way up. If you leave your car in a garage you do not know what the bill will be. This matter should be taken up by the Department with the vocational education people and cleared up.
I mentioned the primary school in Navan. There are quite a number of others in Meath. There is an extension in a place called Kilkate. Since 1973 this school has required additional accommodation. At that time a pre-fab was erected. The Department sanctioned an extension to the school and playground. In 1978 the local hall, which is 100 yards from the main school, was converted into another classroom. Now the original three-teacher school built to accommodate 60 pupils is catering for five teachers and over 150 pupils. They have been collecting money since 1977, to pay a share of the capital requirement.
With these funds the school management has purchased the land necessary for the playground and renovated the local hall to provide a classroom. They have sufficient money available to pay a share of the building cost at present day prices. Apparently the present hold-up is due to the playground having to be re-sited as a result of which the Department have to re-sanction the complete project. Is that not a lot of nonsense? Is it not just a question of somebody messing around and using that type of excuse to hold up the spending of money? If not, I should like the Minister to let me know what it is when he is replying. Naturally the people are very angry about the delay. They feel they are being made fools of and I am afraid I would have to agree it looks very much as if the Department are playing along and kicking to touch. Because of this attempt to hold back the spending of moneys and for a number of other reasons there are situations such as that at Ashbourne where the local priest was asked to find a site but where, I understand, an attempt was made, without telling anyone publicly about it, to take over a playground as a site for the school. That is not the way these matters should be approached. In this case, understandably, local resentment built up and the site is back again in the hands of those who had it originally for use as a playground, whereas if the matter had been handled differently it could have been settled easily. However, a site is being acquired now in the area.
There is a need in an area like Ashbourne for a secondary school. There should be easy access, too, to vocational education in such areas of big and growing populations. The vocational schools are doing a tremendous job. It would be good, not only for our children but for the country generally, for parents who are so keen to send their children to university to realise how much better off a child might be to be put through vocational education and then into a trade. I am all for those children who are capable of taking advantage of university education being given that opportunity but there are many cases in which there are children at university who are not suited to an academic education. People who have trades have no difficulty in earning a living.
While tremendous work is being done by the vocational schools and by the technical colleges, they are very limited in terms of accommodation. I recall that during the Coalition term of office there was a decision to erect additional technical schools in certain areas—Trim, Navan and Kells being three of the areas involved. While we are told that the school at Navan will be completed within a year or so, there is no news of anything happening in regard to the other areas. Because of the big increase in the populations of areas such as those the Minister should realise the need for additional education facilities both at primary and secondary level particularly.
Teachers are working very hard in trying to cater for the huge number of students attending the schools but if the necessary additional accommodation is not made available we will be faced with very serious problems. So far as County Meath is concerned within a matter of a year or so the vocational schools will be totally overcrowded.
Navan is a town which has a number of good schools and one of these, St. Martha's, has been in existence for a long time. It is run as a type of agricultural college for girls. The order concerned have decided to close the school in 1981; and if they go ahead with their plan in this regard there will be a big gap to be filled in the town so far as education is concerned. If the building and the adjoining farm are put up for auction they will attract a very high tax. I understand that Meath County Committee of Agriculture are to send a deputation to the Minister to ask him if he would be prepared to consider taking over this school and using it for the purpose for which it was intended originally. I will add my voice to this proposal because it would be very unfortunate if this important centre of education is not to be continued as such.
Another problem, which perhaps concerns more the Minister of State, is the question of school transport. I have the greatest sympathy with those who are attempting to operate school buses but I would point out that since the service is in existence it should be used properly. While I am aware that the service is very costly, there is not any point in having a situation of half measures. I am not at all satisfied with the school transport system as it is being operated. I have had many complaints from parents about their children being collected as early as 7.20 a.m. and taken to school where, if the weather is bad, they either huddle in bicycle sheds or some such places, or else ramble around town until the school opens. This happens because the buses concerned are making three journeys to the schools. The same procedure applies in the evening with the result that the children who were taken with the last load in the morning are the last to be collected for transportation home so that it can be after 6 p.m. when they reach home. Something should be done to improve that situation.
There is the problem also of children who do not qualify for free transport but who may be taken to school by bus if they walk, say, a mile-and-a-half down the road in order to qualify for transportation to school.
Another situation that is the cause of much annoyance to parents is that, in order to qualify for transportation to school, children may have to go on a bus that is taking children to a different school from that which the family traditionally have attended and which the older children in a family may still be attending.
There is the system, too, of charging children for seats on a bus if they do not qualify for free travel in the ordinary way. One wonders how much revenue is collected in this way. The whole idea seems very petty. Another problem is that occasionally the buses fail to arrive to collect the children. Apparently there was a dispute some time ago involving CIE in regard to the rates to be paid to the private bus operators. This dispute resulted in unfortunate children not being able to go to schools for several weeks in some areas. The system of closing down schools that are in good condition is very wrong because it results in children having to attend schools that are long distances from their homes.
I am not satisfied that parent-teacher committees are operating in the way they were intended. I suggest that the inspectors be asked to inquire about the personnel on these committees and the number of meetings held. I know some managers feel they are a damn nuisance because when they have a meeting the members only find something to complain about. From time to time we have all had similar experience when meeting trade union or political groups. When we meet, people complain about certain matters which they would not have raised if they had not met us. Because of that attitude many managers are not very keen on meeting the parent-teacher groups. This is wrong. They should meet as often as is laid down, and an effort should be made to monitor the way they are carrying out their job.
Education is such a big item that it would be impossible for anybody in the time available to deal with all the problems. On 11 March 1980 I asked the Minister for Education the location in County Meath of the five new national schools and three vocational schools which have been approved by his Department, the date of the approval and the stage reached in the erection of the school. The reply I got was as follows:
Abbeylands, Navan—Grant sanctioned August 1979. Tenders under construction.
Some of the people in the Department might let me know where a tender is if it is "under construction". At present nothing is under construction except excuses for not giving the money.
Trim, Boys—Approved in principle January 1974. Site offered October 1979. Awaiting inspection by OPW.
From October 1979 to the present time, has that site been inspected?
Ashbourne—Approval in principle May 1979. School authorities invited on 1 June 1979 to obtain suitable site.
They obtained a site in a clumsy way and as a result the site slipped away. They are now in course of getting another site.
Kilcloon—Approved in principle May 1978. Sketch plans prepared July 1979. A reply is waited from the Rev. Chairman of the board of management concerning title for the site.
This matter has been dealt with. I would like to know exactly what has happened with regard to the new school at Kilcloon.
Nobber—Approval in principle May 1976. Sketch plans are under consideration. Question of title is being taken up with Rev. Chairman.
Is it reasonable to say, four years after it has been approved in principle, that the Department should be still considering sketch plans or that the question of title should not be cleared? If the reverend chairman has not done this, it is reasonable to ask what is happening. All those schools are badly needed, as well as many others I have not mentioned.
Architectural planning was authorised for the vocational school at Nobber on 25 October 1978, at Navan on 16 February 1979 and at Trim on 13 July 1979. The Minister said that the procedure leading to the placing of contracts had not yet been completed in any of those cases. That is not an answer to my question. I believe we are playing around with this problem. Something is wrong.
The Catholic population of Navan, according to the parochial records, is about 14,000 and increasing. The primary schools are: St. Josephs's, St. Anne's, Oliver Plunkett's, Cannstown, special schools and Flowerfield, the Church of Ireland school. The special schools are: St. Ultan's and St. Mary's and the pupils come from all over County Meath. The Department should move quickly to get the necessary money. Nobody can tell me about the difficulty there is in getting money especially for education. I am well aware that some people do not feel it is a priority and as a result it may fall behind. I am sure the Minister is strong enough to make his case and look for his pound of flesh. Unfortunately the Minister of State is not in a position to turn the screw on anybody except the Minister and I have no doubt he will be able to do that if the occasion arises.
I asked about enrolments for 1979-80 in certain schools and the available estimated accommodation. There are a number of schools around County Meath, including those in County Dublin, Balbriggan, Blanchardstown particularly, one in Drogheda, one in Ardee and the remainder in the county. It is very difficult to get exact figures but the position is that in St. Patrick's Classical Academy in Navan there were 524 enrolments in 1979-80 and the available estimated accommodation is 550. There is a very small margin there. In the Mercy Convent there were 522 enrolments and available estimated accommodation for 525. Three more pupils and it is full. In the Loreto Convent there were 462 enrolments and accommodation for 500. In the vocational school there were 570 enrolments and available estimated accommodation for 570 pupils. The Navan schools have all the children they can cater for.
In Kells the CBS had 304 enrolments and had available estimated accommodation for 300. The Convent of Mercy had 449 enrolments and accommodation for 450, one more pupil and it is full. The vocational school had 189 enrolments and available estimated accommodation for 300. In Athboy the vocational school had 139 enrolments with accommodation for 225 pupils. The Convent of Mercy had 284 enrolments and available estimated accommodation for 300. The Dunshaughlin Community College had 487 enrolments and the available estimated accommodation is 500. St. Oliver's post-primary school, Oldcastle, had 426 enrolments and the available estimated accommodation is 425. The vocational school, Nobber, had 334 enrolments and the available estimated accommodation is 375.
The Deputy is over his time.
I want to give just a few figures——
The Chair will have trouble with other Deputies.
In Trim the CBS had 222 enrolments and accommodation for 325 pupils. The vocational school had 182 enrolments and estimated accommodation for 225 students. The Mercy Convent had 443 enrolments and available estimated accommodation for 450. The Langwood vocational school had 185 enrolments and estimated accommodation for 200 students. Gormanston, which does not cater for many locals, had 497 enrolments with available estimated accommodation for 500 boys.
Enrolments are catching up on accommodation and this urgent matter must be dealt with. I ask the Department to try to ensure that the schools which have already been sanctioned will be started soon, and they could find out how many more schools will be needed in the future.
It is good to be afforded an opportunity of debating Estimates and the idea of a weekly discussion is a sound one. Hitherto we tended to vote vast sums of money without giving the House any opportunity for debate on them.
The Minister of State is aware of my views on certain aspects of education. I have had occasion to meet him and the Minister himself, particularly in relation to the primary sector which is the most important one, though when one looks at the capitation grants and the moneys allocated to this sector one would not get that impression. I have always considered it to be the Cinderella of education, the sector that has tended to be treated worst. The facts and figures are there to illustrate this. There are tremendous financial pressures on the people managing these schools. They are treated badly and the money allocated per pupil is totally inadequate, not even approaching what is needed.
The case I want to make today is in regard to particular areas of this city which, for various reasons, are deprived and where education presents but one of the problems obtaining. There are others of vandalism, unemployment and so on, all of them interrelated. However, I want now to speak about the educational aspect. I am sure the Minister will agree that in certain areas there are pupils leaving schools today with a high degree of illiteracy. It is indeed sad that children who have spent a number of years in an educational institution should leave without having the basic rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic. This fact is known to the Department and relevant statistics have been compiled. In such areas there is also a high rate of truancy. I was one of a group who met the Minister recently in regard to these problems, when we found him to be sympathetic but sympathy is not sufficient any longer. We must have action and planned action.
The Inter-Departmental Committee on inner-city development made certain very sound recommendations in the educational sector. First, they recommended that the pupil-teacher ratio be dropped considerably to 20. Indeed I would think it could be reduced to an even smaller number but certainly, for a start, it should be reduced to 20 in these areas. They recommended also that there be liaison between the teachers and parents in these schools. It is important that there be that kind of relationship between the teachers and parents. We usually know what is happening in the home; we see the problems as they develop; we usually know also why certain problems arise for particular pupils. It is important that these problems be identified because then we can set about tackling them. If teachers are unaware of the reason a child or children are unable to interpret or absorb what they are being taught, then they in turn cannot fulfil their role, which is the education of these children. Another important recommendation of that committee was that consideration be given to the provision of meals for children in some of these schools, not merely a bun and a bottle of milk but something more substantial. I have no doubt but that a lot of these children go to school hungry and, obviously, if a child is hungry he or she cannot absorb knowledge. There may be various reasons why that child is hungry, perhaps through lack of finance in the home, a broken home or a mother going out to work leaving the children to fend for themselves. It is important that when the child arrives in school we endeavour to give him some nutrition. The whole concept of education is to uplift the mind and instil knowledge. If there are impediments in the way of such children gaining knowledge, then the Department have an obligation to identify and eradicate them where they can. I believe that is possible.
Many years ago in cities there was a mixed community; there were the grocers, publicans, tradesmen, business people and so on living in their area of employment, whose children attended local national schools, with a consequent reasonably good social and economic mix. But, with the advent of affluence, most of these people have moved to the suburbs, leaving behind the lower income groups carrying a high degree of unemployment and so on. I believe that has had a detrimental effect on the teacher-pupil ratio in inner city areas which, in turn, means that teachers are unable to impart knowledge in the way they should and would like. The teachers themselves are well aware of these problems. The INTO have presented a comprehensive report on all of these problems. It is not something I have dreamed up but, as long as the problems exist, I shall continue to hammer at them.
I would ask the Minister to examine the Inter-Departmental Committee recommendations on the inner-city areas, to examine the proposals put forward by the INTO in regard to this type of education and to conduct pilot schemes in a number of these schools, thereby pursuing a positive policy. If that kind of attitude is adopted it will reap quick rewards, and we will not encounter so many children leaving school unable to read or write. Indeed that is an indictment of our system. I am not saying the system is all wrong or bad. The national schools system is a good one but it has defects which should be identified and rectified. I believe this could be done at a reasonably low cost. We hear so much these days about lack of finance. I do realise that finance poses a problem but, at the same time, it must be remembered that there are areas where money spent will yield great benefits. I am satisfied that the reason this is not tackled is that the schools about which we are talking have not got a strong voice; they have not got a large, articulate lobby; they have not got pressure groups. They are literally thrown to the wolves. From a political point of view, a lot of them do not vote and the attitude tends to be that they can be discounted.
This is a sad situation. We in this House have an obligation to help young children from deprived areas of high unemployment and dereliction and to get something moving quickly. If the Department were to take at least three schools in three different areas and have pilot schemes for them over two or three years or so, monitor them and watch their progress, I guarantee that the improvements would be astronomical. The very small amount of money expended would be very well spent. As I said earlier, the money spent on primary education is a disgrace. Primary education is the Cinderella which gets no real consideration. Possibly one of the reasons for this is that the majority of people use this only as a stepping stone. However, there are a large number of children for whom primary education is the only education they get. They do not go beyond that stage.
In these pilot schemes in the deprived areas we must aim towards bringing the child up to as high a standard as possible. We must improve the standard of these primary schools. There should be a strong vocational element from a certain level up, by way of experience of work and some manual training for these children, to give their hands a feel for work.
Lifting the school age to 15 years is a good thing but if these children are only hanging around until they are 15, bored silly and totally disinterested in what is going on and generally causing problems for the rest of the school, it is a useless exercise keeping them at school. It is paying lip service to the fact that we have an age limit for attendance at school. That is not enough. We must make schools attractive and give children an education which will equip them for their field in life and teach them to adapt to life and work. The Department of Education do not see this as part of their role but it is very much a part of their role. Unless they do, we cannot say that we are treating all our children as equal. It may appear on paper that we are, but on looking at the records, particularly in the problem areas, one can see that all the children are not being treated equally.
As I said, many children only receive primary education but the financial input into this is very low in relation to what is put into secondary and third level education. Let us not fool ourselves that we are treating all children equally, because we are not.
The deprived areas are identified in the INTO report and the inter-departmental report. The Department know them well and know what is going on. The situation will have to be taken seriously. Unless it is, we shall have problems of vandalism in our towns as a result of boredom and rejection by a society to which these children cannot relate. They do not relate to society because their education has not taught them to relate to it. We have a grave responsibility here in this whole area of education.
Parent-teacher meetings are an excellent idea and should be encouraged because they get the parents involved. They are generally held during the day, often excluding the fathers from attending, which is regrettable. Also, when they are being held the rest of the school may have a half-day off. The people who should be facilitated here are the parents. They are concerned about the progress of their children and anxious to know if they can do anything to help. If they are being excluded because of commitments of employment or whatever, these meetings will not serve their intended purpose. This may be a matter between the teacher unions and the Department but a good idea should be worked on to its best advantage. Everything done in this area is to the advantage of the pupils, who are the important element.
Boards of management are also a very good idea. They involve people in education and that is democracy working well. I often get the impression that there is a certain resentment from the teaching profession towards these boards of management. I may be incorrect in that but there tends to be a little friction and possibly resentment that the boards of management have any role. These boards should have a basic, fundamental right because they represent the people. Their children are attending schools and they themselves, by virtue of the fact that they are taxpayers and footing the bill, should have a say. They should have a say in the whole aspect of education, not just in the day-to-day running of schools, how to landscape the garden, or paint the front of the school, or keep it clean. Their ideas about the right type of input into education should be considered. That is how boards of management are intended to operate. The vast majority of parents are concerned about the progress of their children and the subjects that they are studying. If the parents make sensible suggestions regarding the curriculum they should be implemented if possible.
We have a strong orientation towards academic education but with the advent of technological advances there is need for a greater emphasis on technology. A secondary school education tends to gear people towards the academic rather than the technical aspects. The time has come for us to take a new look at education, to decide on the career structures that will be necessary. We cannot afford to let people drift willy-nilly into education, eventually taking a BA degree or something similar. Greater control will have to be exercised over the money and input into education.
The number of girls who opt out of maths and science always amazes me. Generally, the academic standards attained by the girls are high but they tend to shy away from science. They have a great potential in this area and they should be encouraged to develop their talents. We tend to look on girls as having a particular role and leave it at that. However, in this technological age they should be encouraged to study science. I am not trying to force people into any particular branch of education but I think we must open up our minds and our attitudes in the light of the vast changes in the world today. If we want to stay in the race our people must be educationally equipped to cope with technological advances. We should study the broad base of our educational system and ensure that everyone is given an opportunity to develop his or her talents. That is not happening. If we want to involve people in technology we must structure our places of education in a different way.
Vocational education schools are doing an excellent job. However, there is a gap between the primary level and the vocational level that should be examined to ensure that the streaming into the vocational schools is right. Encouragement should be given to young people to take up trades because there are great opportunities in this area. The vocational schools give this encouragement but this should be done also at primary level. Very often students drift into secondary schools and the trade element disappears somewhat. Then, when pupils obtain their leaving certificate they find it is too late to take up a trade. It would be worth while to make them aware at primary level of the opportunities that exist in the trades. I realise that we must get the best value for the money we spend but I do not think this always happens. There seems to be a reluctance to acquaint pupils at primary level with all the facts regarding a career in the trades.
Adult education is important and a considerable amount of work has been done in this area. Many people who avail of this facility have had a reasonable education already and they go back to learn a craft or a language. However, there are many others who have not received a high standard of education. They left school early, married and reared a family. Wives particularly are at a loss with their children and are unable to help them because of their own educational background. Adult education schemes were set up to cater for these people, to cater for late learners who for one reason or another did not respond at school and who are anxious to learn now.
We should examine the prospect of bringing education to these people, not necessarily through the education institutions, which some people find offputting. We should consider bringing education to a ladies club or a community club, for instance, where people would not consider it as some sort of formal education but as an enlightening experience and a pleasurable evening. A lot of people in need of education would respond to this type of approach far better than to institutionalised courses. These courses are all right in their own way but some people, perhaps because of their past experiences, are fearful of institutionalised education. We should experiment in this area so as to get such people to avail of adult education. It would be a worthwhile pilot scheme in deprived areas where very little money is being spent at present. The life and heart is being taken out of these areas and these people suffer deprivation and degradation. If we do not seriously consider how we can help these people, we will compound the problems and short-term solutions will not solve them.
There is much talk of vandalism in the city areas but we can combat that on an educational platform. We should educate people to make them aware of the life around them, as many people from deprived areas are not really aware of the flowers and the trees or anything else. Neither girls nor boys are aware of their roles in life. All these things should be part of their lives, and we should look to that type of education as well as to the formal three R's type. The vandalism occurs because people are bored, and that is a sad reflection on society. It means that we have not opened these people's minds and that as far as they are concerned education has been a failure. These people are isolated from the mainstream of life. We will have to do something quickly or the situation will get worse.
We have failed miserably with a lot of young people, but it is not too late. We can educate them and give them job experience. We can give them confidence and help them to develop their personalities. There is no revolutionary plan here and there is no great expense. It is just a question of formulating a policy giving them concerned, trained teachers so that a relationship will develop between the family and the teachers, so that everybody will be aware of the problems and nothing will be done in isolation. If we do this we could really say that we cherish all our children equally. As long as the system operates as it does today we cannot cherish all our children equally. There is a definite bias in favour of one against the other, as can be seen from the figures. In one vast catchment area only one person sat for the leaving certificate last year and one from the same family is sitting for it this year. I do not say that everybody should do the leaving certificate, but that figure is a sad reflection on us. A vast amount of money is spent on third level education but these areas are not getting it. Let us not delude ourselves that we are tackling education seriously. We are—for the well-off people who can afford to pay the full fees for third level education, whose parents got the benefit of third level education and because of that they can afford to pay the fees. They are benefiting from high subventions while the people at the lower end of the ladder get nothing.
The Deputy has five minutes.
We have to examine the ability of people to pay. If we are in an era of scarce financial resources, that is fair enough. We must ensure that people will be treated equally fairly.
That is why the whole grants system in third level education is ridiculous, in my view. It does not give aid to people who need it, to those whose incomes are too low. The system does not achieve what one should aim at in any such system; it does not give people a chance to lift themselves up. Though we have had reforms and changes in education we have not been helping the people who need help most. The means test is tied at incomes at too low a level.
Again I ask the Minister in particular to consider carefully the pilot schemes. I also ask him to reduce the teacher-pupil ratio, which is too high. I suggest it be reduced to 15 to one, not 20 to one as suggested in the departmental recommendation. The Minister should also examine the possibility of providing hot meals for school children. They would then be able to absorb better what is going on around them.
If we do not take care of these matters we will be condemning more and more people to the scrap heap because of lack of a proper education. It is heart-rending to walk around and observe so many young people without ambition, pride or concern because they have not been given a proper education. It is not any wonder we have the problems we have among our young people.
Deputy O'Brien is correct, as are most of the Deputies who have been criticising the Minister, the Government and the Department on the issue of education. Of course it has happened before and if we go on the way we are it will happen again. Throughout most parliaments in Western Europe we are getting speeches on one side by the governments and on the other by the oppositions. Governments are being indicted quite legitimately by the oppositions for their failure to provide money for what I readily call the most important service of all, education. There have been cuts in services across the water and in Northern Ireland, and the Conservative politicians tell us these cuts are necessary and they are making these cuts in an active way.
It is not just in education that these cuts are being made. We also find there are cuts in respect of housing, employment creation, health and social welfare. What those governments and this Government are trying to persuade Parliament to believe is that it is all some sort of an act of God, inevitable, that nothing can be done about it, and nobody seems to ask why does one go on operating a socio-economic system which makes these demands on the masses of the people, men and women and their children, while at the same time there is the privileged class to whom Deputy O'Brien referred, the privileged people who will go to Clongowes, the High School, Mountjoy, Belvedere, Blackrock and so on—this minority of professional classes who will go on being members of the professions while the working people will go on, if they are lucky, learning trades, whether they are trades which suit them or not. In a country in which an enormous amount of wealth is held by a tiny minority, 6 or 7 per cent, the mass of the people are told they have got to take these cuts in all these essential services in order to preserve this essentially privileged class in society.
It is the mass of the people who will make these bitter sacrifices which are inevitable as a result of these cuts in Votes, particularly in education. I do not think there is anything more heartbreaking for a parent who has children who they feel are talented and capable of benefiting from a proper education than to see them coming to a stand-still, having to go out prematurely to earn a living because life is so tough in our society. They work all of their time in dead-end, repetitious employment, deeply dissatisfied, frustrated and, as Deputy O'Brien said, is it any wonder there are so many angry young people around?
That is why any proper expansion in education was opposed in our early years by the conservative elements in our society. There was fear of growing literacy, of higher and better education, which would increase the expectations of people, their aspirations, above all for their children. Those of us who have contact with our constituents know how marvellously self-sacrificing parents are on the whole, how very ambitious they are for their children. They are prepared to work hard, overtime, week-ends, to try to give their children a better chance than they had in life.
This Government were portrayed to us a few years ago in the last election as a reforming Government who would do great things. The first thing they did was to take each Department and make very severe cuts, accordingly reducing living standards in all the important aspects of life in the community. A number of us who spoke at the time said there would not be any substantial changes or improvements. The Taoiseach, Deputy Haughey, is a notoriously conservative person who has no great wish to see our society changed. What he wants is not a change in class structures but to see children educated for the needs of industry. The masses will carry on the way they are and be educated for the needs of industry. Outside of that, the moral responsibility of a Government to provide for the education, development and further flowering of talents and intellect that young people may have is not a question that concerns very conservative politicians like the Taoiseach, Deputy Haughey, or the Minister for whom most of us, when he took office, had very high expectations. It is very sad to see how a person who set off with such determination to leave his mark on the Department of Education should leave such a dreadful mark as he is now doing because he is facing what is essentially a crisis in the western system monopoly capitalism. He is facing it not by looking for more money by way of a capital levy on the wealthy of 20 or 25 per cent but by sacrifices from the ordinary people.
There is no doubt that education took great strides forward in the time of Donogh O'Malley and later. The appalling education that we knew 25 or 30 years ago where there were 70 or 80 pupils in a class, virtually no secondary education and certainly no access to third level education, did improve with the development of vocational schools, the outlets through AnCO and the improvement of grants and, to a certain extent, scholarships. Governments do not seem to have an overall policy in regard to their attitudes to society as a whole. We are a people who, as recent debates have shown, do not believe in any kind of population control whatever. That is an attitude of mind which is not at issue now but it creates enormous problems for society. One has to house these people, look after them when they grow old, look after them when they fall sick and educate them. We do not seem to be prepared to reconcile the high moral tone we have on the issue of population control and contraception and pay the price these demands make on society.
We are facing a situation where 50 per cent of the population are under 25 years of age and 40 per cent are under the age of 15. That is a population which will create great problems for the Department of Education, whatever Minister is there. Instead of continuing the modest advances made in the sixties and later we now have the policy of expansion in development in education being put into reverse and stopped. There has been a sense of shock and that is one thing on which there has been unanimity amongst the various authorities who have been criticising the cuts. Among people working the educational system, the presidents of universities, the Catholic Primary School Managers Association, vocational education committees and so on, there appears to be a sense of consternation. Here we are with an educational system which we were encouraged to expand, develop, build and lay out programmes for over the years ahead and now we are given to understand that in some way or other we have to try to provide the same services with diminishing funds. Everyone knows that it simply cannot be done.
Tussing's paper on that makes some very interesting comments about the failure of the Government and the Department to bear these factors in mind. There is an attempted expansion and I am in favour of expansions on all fronts. Where there is a conservative government with conservative attitudes it is essentially a betrayal of trust to give the impression that they are operating a system and a government in a community in which they can provide education at all levels, primary, secondary, third level, technical and scientific, that social justice will inevitably happen as a by-product of private enterprise chasing profits, and that everybody will benefit as a result. That is demonstrably untrue and is becoming clearer throughout Europe and here as time goes on. It cannot be done like that. Half a dozen families accumulating a lot of wealth and organising the raw materials of wealth, land, labour and money, is not enough to provide money on the scale that Ministers for Education have successfully claimed they want to provide.
It is popular for all politicians to say that everybody should be able to fulfil whatever talents they are given and that they believe in a society which will make this possible. The reality is the opposite to that and has been seen to be. If one takes the rather conservative Tussing attitude where, if one believes in this kind of society one can only create a tiny amount of money as a result of the operation of the private enterprise system, they concentrate on a small sector of society and give them a top quality education. I do not advocate this. They should not try to create the impression that they can build an enormous educational infrastructure from which everyone can draw according to their talents and find intellectual and educational fulfilment. One cannot do that. That is one of the sacrifices the masses have to make for the trust that successive Irish Governments have had in their conservative economic policies. The money is not there. There are other factors with the growing population, and they have to be linked to our attitudes to population control. We do not believe in population control so we are left with a rapidly increasing population.
There is also the fact that religious orders are finding it difficult to get recruits and the places of those who worked for little or nothing in the past are being taken by people who must be paid. In fairness to the Department, obviously the salaries of teachers at all levels are being increased, certainly on what they were 20 or 25 years age. They are not what the recipients would like but they are better than they were. This is an added expense. Therefore there is the shortage of people who provide education for little or nothing—of course quite unnecessarily. A country should never depend on people working for little or nothing. It is very fine of them to do so and I am not denigrating them for that. As a product myself of the Christian Brothers, the Marist Brothers, the Jesuits and so on, I appreciate all they have done. But a society should not depend on this kind of charity in regard to essential services. However, many of these people have left and new recruits are not coming into this service as much as they did in the past. Consequently, that means another increase in cost for the Department.
We have now a different kind of educational system, a lot of which is concerned with technology, and this means increased and more costly equipment. Schools are more complicated. The big rooms of the old days with 50, 60 or 70 pupils are gone and we have small classes. That means more teachers and more expense. Children are staying on longer at school. That is a wonderful development because obviously 14 was an absurd age to leave school, illequipped for life in every conceivable way, as so many had to do. Smaller classes, staying on longer in school, the increased number of teachers and better conditions of employment for them, and the back-log in schools having to be built all mean added expense.
The 1930s and the war years represented a bad period when people generally were indolent in regard to education. A large number of people were frightened at the idea of educating the working class. That is quite understandable, because there is a marked increase in political literacy as a result of the education which they now have, and that is very frightening for vested interests and the establishment there. Schools were not built. This problem for the Minister is escalating, and the depressing thing is that it will not go away. It has to be dealt with. Either you face the idea that small families are better for many reasons and in expenditure create less demand on your educational system, or you have to build more schools and to find more money to pay more teachers. The alternative is to change the whole system and see that the money is made available by using the other devices that are there to create wealth.
Tussing's suggestion to select one sector of society for whatever money you have would be highly unfair. It would mean that there would be a great reservoir of people who would not get any kind of education at all. This is completely indefensible. You cannot go around pretending that you operate an economic system which creates the wealth to live as many socialist countries live where the wealth is created for the masses by the optimum inter-use of land, labour and capital. The optimum wealth is created because the aspiration of that society is to look after the whole of the population, not just a handful who go to the elitist schools, colleges and universities. Time and time again all through Europe it is being shown that there is no other way of providing for the demands of an egalitarian society outside of some kind of socialist system for the structuring of society. This is being proved here in the Government's case. The head of the INTO, Gerry Quigley, condemned the level of expenditure on primary education. He called it "a major blow to the development of the education provisions and a threat to the fabric of primary education". He got support in that from the ICTU and other teachers' organisations.
Tussing made one other point about expenditure. He said that one needs a 2 to 3.25 per cent increase on the current rate of inflation in order to stand still. Of course we are short of doing anything like that. The Minister gave me a smart answer which I suppose I asked for in that I was not sufficiently specific yesterday when I was asking questions about expenditure. With inflation estimated at 18 per cent with a 3 per cent increase the cut-back is in the region of 15 per cent in some aspects of the educational system. This means that simple things will be cut back. First the school transport system, which was a very fine development, will be cut back due to the rapid increase in the price of fuel. The vocational educational system was probably one of the brightest developments, which incidentally was resisted by the establishment here. It gave young people who left school at 14 a chance to move on and get a trade or craft. The Dublin VEC administrative expenses are slashed by £83,000, equipment expenditure by £125,000, books and stationery by £69,000, repairs and replacements by £119,000 and scholarships are pegged to the 1979 level. I am sure that other Deputies have referred to those cuts, but it would be better if the Minister would join in the attempts by the Opposition speakers when deciding what he is going to do. There is no doubt that his Government and particularly his Department are in a state of severe crisis. This kind of thing will create great hardship throughout our educational system and there is no good pretending it will not.
I should now like to deal with the question of corporal punishment in our schools. For many years I have tabled parliamentary questions about corporal punishment and it is astonishing to think that it continues to be used in our society. The elimination of that would not require a great deal of work by the Minister. He could deal with that absurd situation easily. With the British, we are one of the last countries in western Europe that continues to use corporal punishment. I accept that it is not used to the same extent now and that the situation has greatly improved from what it was in my time at school. That is to be welcomed but corporal punishment is bad and, speaking as a psychiatrist, is quite indefensible and does an enormous amount of damage to the child. I suspect that the Minister is much too civilised a person to have credit in the need for corporal punishment in his educational attitudes. He seems to be overborne by the opposition which, from the long list he read out, seems to be headed by members of religious orders. Of course, whatever they say here is notoriously important and Ministers tend to be slow to do anything about that matter because of their views. The Minister should consider this question as a matter of considerable urgency.
It is inconceivable that a big person should ever touch a small person. I cannot understand the rationale of that. This question of corporal punishment is something that went right through society, from the time ships' captains were allowed to beat passengers, husbands were allowed to beat their wives and prison governors were allowed to beat their prisoners. All of that is inconceivable now to us all and I suspect that in ten or 20 years' time when we have got rid of this beating of little children by grown-ups people will wonder how we kept it on for so long. The British have held on to that system for longer than any other European country and we inherited it from them but that is no defence. We are all over 21 and we can make decisions for ourselves. We could have got rid of that system at any time but for a collection of reasons we held on to it. Behavioural scientists have shown it to be an inefficient method of control. It does not work. There is an illusion that it works. If one takes a performing bear, a pony or a tiger and whips it into its place one can make it behave in a certain way by fear. However, enormous damage is done and this is particularly so in relation to punishment between the adult and the child.
The illusion of children sitting around quietly obeying the teacher because they are afraid of him is something which the teacher should be ashamed of. If they are quiet because they respect the teacher that is another matter. I do not see how any small person could respect a grown-up who hits or assaults that person. It is total abuse of the position of a powerful and strong person over a weak person. The child has no alternative but to conform to whatever he or she is asked to do and a relationship of trust is replaced by a relationship of fear. That amounts to a shattering loss of the correct dynamic that should exist between adults and children, whether they are parents or teachers. The dynamic in human relationship should be a trusting and, ideally, a loving one. There is no more powerful relationship amongst human beings than the loving relationship. The one of fear creates a sense of deceit. All the child does is to conform for the period the bully is present but, as soon as the bully disappears, the child behaves as he would behave anyway.
Pain punishment induces aggressive behaviour on the part of the child and this is one of the ways our children learn about violence. Where do they learn it except in our schools? There is an extraordinary absurdity in the condemnation one hears so frequently from adults about the behaviour of young hooligans and young thugs when, in fact, adults behave like middle-aged hooligans and middle-aged thugs when they assault a little child at school, a child who is completely at their mercy. Teachers all over Europe are able to keep discipline without the need of any kind of corporal punishment. As far as they are concerned the whole idea of hitting a child is something they would not contemplate. The European Court of Human Rights in the Isle of Man case described corporal punishment as degrading treatment.
Some people hold the view that corporal punishment, so long as it is a little smack, involves no danger. But what is a little smack to a child? It is an assault always. What the adult is assuming is that the child understands the matter he is trying to explain to him as clearly as the teacher himself understands. With things like backwardness or mental retardation in children it is quite possible that the child does not fully follow what is being explained by the teacher and it is completely irrational behaviour on the part of the adult when at a certain stage in the teaching process the teacher hits out at the child. To the child this is completely inexplicable.
I have been talking for, I suppose 25 years on this subject. I have to accept that either I am a very bad teacher, not very good at explaining the point I am trying to make or else the people to whom I am talking are slow learners or a mixture of both of these things. The result, in any case, is that the change does not take place. The last thing I would think of doing is going over to Deputy Tunney, Minister of State, taking up some blunt instrument and hitting him in order to try to make him understand what I was trying to say to him. To me, that would be completely irrational behaviour. This is the mistake so frequently made by both parents and teachers. So, the only person—we can talk about the subject—who can do anything about this is the Minister. I should be glad to know why he continues to hesitate.
One of the depressing features of our education system—certainly in the past; I do not know to what extent it has changed now—has been its very aggressively didactic, authoritarian nature—two and two are four, never five or three—and the unquestioning acceptance of what the teacher says. Pearse, who was quite good on this type of thing, quite radical in his attitude to education, pointed out that the whole of the education process should be a creative process, not memorising something that the god-figure, the teacher, has told you because the god-figure can frequently be wrong. All of us can be wrong and the more we advance in knowledge the more we come to accept this. It is very dangerous to tell somebody something as an absolute truth; one should do it with a certain amount of diffidence. The correct education process should be one of inspiring the person to wonder and to work out problems for himself rather than give ready-made answers.
This whole didactic process of education in the Republic of such an authoritarian nature together with corporal punishment has led to the creation of an extraordinarily passive society, a very frightening society because it leads to ready acceptance of any diktat by any authority figure. This could easily lead in time of crisis to the acceptance of the demagogue, the dictator and general fascist attitudes to life. I think that is not an unfair charge. There is a great fear of authority in Irish society and it stems from the educational system. The analyst would tell you that in fact the origin of wishing to hand out punishment in prisons or in schools derives from a form of sadism which in its conscious or unconscious form comes from repressed sexual drives. This is well known and is one of the fascinating questions in regard to the abuse of education by the corporal punishment system in certain schools by some people. It is really a manifestation of the emotional problems which the teacher has. That is rather ominous and disturbing.
I know that the subject of corporal punishment creates great animus on both sides; people are very pro and very anti the whole idea. I am glad to say that in recent years the younger generation appear to be coming much more to accept the idea that the trusting, loving relationship is easily the more powerful way in which one can help a young person to grow to full maturity and take full advantage of the educational system, and that corporal punishment and the use of fear is a hangover, completely outdated, of mediaeval social attitudes and should have no place in the educational system.
I suspect there is very little we can do in perhaps asking the Minister to do anything about those matters but he can do something about the matter of corporal punishment and in that way leave his mark on the Department of Education.
Is maith liom an deis seo a bheith agam a chur os comhair an Ti seo an dul chun cinn, measaimse, atá déanta i gcúrsaí oídeachais. Tá an tAire cheana féin taréis a chur in a lui an Teach an dul chun cinn atá déanta i gcúrsaí oideachais foirmeálta, mar a déarfá. Dá bhri sin, is é atá ar intinn agamsa ná luí a dhéanamh ar an adhbhar sin de chúrsai oideachais nach bhfuil go traidisiúnta nó nach raibh glactha mar chuid, is dóigh gur fíor a rá, de chúrsai foirmeáltá iad. Seans i ndeireadh an lae go bhfuil siad nios tábhachtaí don duine, go mór mhór don duine óg, ná an gné sin ar a dtugtar cúrsaí foirmeálta oideachais.
I would hope in the time available to me to refer to aspects of education which are my responsibility and which traditionally have not been regarded as pertaining to education in the formal sense. In all honesty it must be said that no educationist would say that the area of my responsibility, youth and sport, forms part of formal education. On the other hand, I am sure all would admit that it is an area which is, perhaps, more important than that encompassed by the traditional definition of formal education. I say that because I accept that education refers to the preparation of the person for life. Living one's life today is not unconnected with being awake for 16 or 17 hours. In the past there was an obligation on a person to spend eight or ten hours of the day in his employment or profession. Today, thanks—if that is the word one should use—to the advances in technology and the advances man has made in respect of the world in which he lives, he is not required to spend that amount of his time at his employment; rather it is the situation that there will be a continual reduction in the hours he so spends. It is because of this that the number of free, leisure, noncommitted hours is increasing at what I would regard as a frightening rate. Therefore, I submit that there is an obligation on the educational system to apply itself to the preparation of man for the gainful employment of that spare time, just as there is an obligation in equal fashion to prepare man for his vocation, employment or profession.
This is what brings me in the area of my responsibility an interest as a parent and as an educationist and an excitement which I enjoy so much. I have responsibilities and duties in an area in which I am happy to report progress to this House.
I have always been conscious of the important role which voluntary youth organisations have been playing in this regard. I was pleased earlier to hear Deputy Tully pay a compliment to the religious for their involvement in the past in education, an involvement which was often disregarded and taken for granted and on which they have not often enough been congratulated. In respect of youth and out-of-school activities the same would apply to voluntary organisations who have been ahead of the State in recognising the existing need. Were it not for the important role they played and the foundation which was there for me, it would not have been possible to build on it in the fashion in which I can say in all modesty we have done in the past three years.
It was in deference to the important role played by these organisations that I declared on 1 October 1979 my personal conviction that youth services are an integral part of the educational system and as such are deserving of State support. I undertook then—and my Department are at present carrying out—a policy of flexibility and sensitivity in our approach to youth and to these organisations, at the same time recognising the voluntary nature of the organisations but adding the indispensable support of the State so that they can co-operate with my Department in the administration and execution of certain programmes and in the preparation of other programmes not yet being applied.
Our youth are our nation's single most important asset, our chief national resource and it is no harm to keep repeating that fact. I am duty bound to carry out to the utmost a sensible and sympathetic policy in relation to our young people. I hope the House will agree that since assuming office I have pursued a policy of action, not a policy of words, which I hope vindicates my statements and the policy of the Government.
I do not wish to refer too much to the past but everybody accepts that comparisons can be made. I am disappointed to have to record that in 1977 on taking up office I inherited a situation fraught with despair and distrust of Governments on the part of youth organisations. There were many reasons why that was so, although I will not comment on what they were. I am simply stating that fact upon which the youth organisations commented ad nauseam. In my opinion there was every justification for their despair. I immediately set about righting the situation and I again venture to claim that within one year I had helped to raise the morale and the hope of youth organisations and bring them to a new peak.
A small but by no means insignificant indication of my commitment is seen in the increased assistance by way of direct grants to youth organisations. In 1977 the figure was £261,000 for 22 organisations and in 1978, the first year I had an opportunity of determining the level of assistance, it was brought to £340,000, an increase of 22 per cent. Similarly in 1979, I provided substantial increases to those same youth organisations, the total figure of grant aid amounting to £412,000. This year, as my Minister has indicated, we will see a further development in the Government's funding of youth organisations.
This development, which was arrived at after close consultations with these organisations, will be in line with my intention to guarantee agreed staff and programmes on the basis that they are providing a vital form of education for young people, one which must be acknowledged and developed. I am hoping that next Monday I will announce the grants to youth organisations in respect of this year and I venture to say I know youth organisations will accept the amounts which I will assign to each organisation as being in accordance with the promises I have made and in accordance with the statements I have made on the importance of the youth movement and the importance of the respective elements in that movement.
I am conscious of the fact that formerly youth organisations had to wait. There was a certain amount of anxiety as to whether or not they would get any money at all from the Government. Because of that and to help to alleviate their anxiety and their frustration, I arranged, last year and this year, that certain advances would be made to them to tide them over until the revelation was made as to what their annual grant would be.
Youth service aims at the development of young people through a wider range and variety of programmes and activities of an informal nature and in a leisured environment. Deputy O'Brien and Deputy Tully pointed out how important it is to get to young people in an enjoyable, pleasant way. I will not comment on formal education but, as a beneficiary under that formal education, as a teacher involved in formal education, I always challenged the position when it seemed to me, as a student and as a teacher, that education had to be associated with distasteful matter, with painful experiences. When we try to overcome our natural reluctance to hard work, an effort is required. For far too long, for the student and for the teacher, there was this concept that true education could not be provided unless the environment was——
Spartan.
——severe, stark, and unattractive and unexciting. Thanks to our educationalists, thanks to the enlightenment of students and of parents, that is changing. I want to remind the House of the importance I attach to youth organisations and what they are doing. They are happy to provide a service, admittedly with a certain controlled freedom, but simultaneously in a fashion which makes it a joy and a pleasure for the young person to benefit. It might be said that the development of youth is a community responsibility and success is highest when community commitment is greatest. This commitment is manifest in a number of adults who are prepared to work face to face with young people in their leisure time.
I should like to refer to criticism which I offered elsewhere and which I am prepared to substantiate. Looking at society today and bearing in mind the major investment made by society in third level education and the opportunity given to an elitist number of students to benefit from third level education and enter our remunerative professions, I am disappointed at the absence of professional people from our youth movements. Apart from anything else, it shows a poor recognition of the indebtedness of those people to the family of people in which they live.
We can talk about classrooms and what we think we should be doing in education matters, but when we ponder on that in respect of those professional people to whom I have referred, who are allegedly the exponents of this great educational system, we see that the solicitor, the lawyer or the judge will mix with and meet his neighbours on a professional basis only. The engineer or the architect will meet with his neighbours on a paying professional basis only. The same applies to the accountant and to the whole body of people who would not have their qualifications but for the fact that the rest of the community were prepared to make the necessary sacrifice to provide third level education at the price at which it is provided, at a figure which we all know is circa £1,200 per year per student.
I should like to repeat my appeal to those people, as a token as their appreciation of the benefits they have received, and in deference to the broadening of horizons which comes from the pursuit of third level education, to be prepared to demonstrate their magnanimity by involving themselves in youth organisations and in voluntary community movements which are aimed at improving the lives of our young people. The contribution to youth work of the voluntary leader is a return rendered by him for the orderly system of society in which he lives and for the sacrifices made by society which have helped him reach his maturity. Through his involvement as a youth leader he will gain a richness of experience in terms of human relationships, of knowledge of social conditions and of the ability to develop organising skills which will serve him well in many fields as well as in his own profession. Indeed, it might be said that his education is not complete without involvement of this kind. Such activity is a sine qua non of the educational requirements of all third level students.
I am confident that both Deputies Horgan and Keating will agree on the need for a strong community-based youth service in order to maximise the effect of the improved and increased support from the Department. As proof of the sincerity of what I am saying moneys have been set aside this year for the purpose of having a publicity campaign that would impress on all adults the need for their joining with youth organisations in the provision of the service being given. A further indication of Government support for voluntary and community effort was the responsibility given to me to administer the development officer scheme. This scheme created inter alia 100 new jobs within voluntary organisations. It has resulted in these organisations providing better facilities and programmes for the whole community. Youth organisations in particular have benefited from the scheme. My support for and confidence in youth organisations has been vindicated again by reason of the fact that half the total complement of 100 officers will be employed by youth organisations. All of this is very useful and can be seen as progress, but there cannot be success without the essential ingredient of the continuation and expansion of voluntary effort. As I have said elsewhere, I have not envisaged at any time that the State would supplant voluntary organisations in this great area of operation. I would be concerned that that should never happen.
My support for the participation of young people and for members of sporting associations in cultural events abroad continues. I am sure that the experience encountered in foreign lands is most helpful to the people concerned in their professional and personal lives. These exchanges continue to raise the standard of youth leadership and of training and sports coaching, all of which are essential ingredients in the Government's policy in this area.
In 1979, again after extensive consultations with voluntary youth organisations, I gave approval for the establishment of an in-service training programme for full-time youth leaders. Arrangements are now at an advanced stage for the establishment of an educational co-operative to operate the programme which will be financed by way of a grant-in-aid from my Department. I am convinced that this programme will increase the skills and the expertise of the professional youth workers and will in turn assist the voluntary leaders who are the backbone of our youth service.
I do not wish it to appear that what I have to say now follows on my reference to the importance of youths going abroad or that there would be any misconception in regard to what I have to say on the need for our young people to be acquainted with their peers in the northern part of the country. There are many tragedies concerning the North and South and one of these is that there are many thousands of teenagers both North and South of the Border who have never had the opportunity of meeting with each other. Recognising that they come from different traditions and different strands, they are nevertheless all part of this island. It is most regrettable that they have never met each other in, say, discos, and that they have never talked with each other about the respective areas in which they live. If we are to overcome the misunderstandings that are commonplace in this island it is essential that the younger generation from both parts of the island have the opportunity of mixing freely together. Such association was never encouraged in the past but in an effort to rectify this situation moneys have been set aside. The amount involved should not be substantial. We must impress on our young people the desirability of meeting with their counterparts from the North of Ireland and to this end the youth organisations can play a big part.
I doubt if either Deputy Horgan or Deputy Keating will challenge what I am saying. Perhaps somebody will say that it should not be necessary for me to make these statements. However, while we have all been aware of the omissions and of the inadequacies of the past in relation to North-South communication, there has been a failure to make positive moves to correct the situation.
Young people are attracted to, and influenced by what is called an award system. I had discussions with interested people about the introduction of an award scheme—comparable with the British scheme the Duke of Edinburgh scheme, or the President's scheme in America—call it the President's Award Scheme or the Cuchulainn Award Scheme, the name will not matter. This would give young people an opportunity to take part in certain pursuits for which there would be credits and as a result they would be entitled to a certain amount of recognition.
On assuming office I realised that everything was not perfect. While we had to prime the pump we also had to make sure that every organisation was mindful of the contribution they had to make, to ensure there was no duplication and that the people in control of youth organisations were up to date on the type and quality of the service needed. To help me I set up the O'Sullivan Committee—a committee under the chairmanship of District Justice O'Sullivan and representatives of youth organisations. They have already submitted an interim report and presently they will furnish a comprehensive report about the effectiveness of existing youth organisations and the need for satisfying certain areas which are not catered for. Earlier I criticised our professional people but now I want to thank the employers and the trade unions for their help. They contributed approximately £5 million to the tripartite fund which helped my Department to provide centres in 64 selected areas. They will help our young people, and the not so young, to spend their free time in a beneficial, useful and wholesome way. I hope the interests of the employers and the trade unions continue and that they will encourage their members to do what they can to help in this area.
I want to mention sport, but I will not deal with it at the same length. I want to thank the voluntary sporting organisations for their fine record of achievement. In areas where there are under-12, under-14, under-15 and under-16 teams, the person in charge usually has not enjoyed third level education. We should all learn from that lesson. In Deputy Keating's, Deputy Horgan's or in my constituency, one will find that most of the people in charge of these teams are non-professionals. This is an enigma.
It is a disgrace.
The picture I see here is of inadequacies in our approach to education and what it should do, apart altogether from our obligations as Christians to be concerned for our neighbours. I cannot understand why the people who help most are those who seem to have benefited less from our education system.
In a debate in this House it is acknowledged that a speaker may exaggerate or present his case in an extreme way in the hope that it will influence some people. I expect I will get reminders in tomorrow's post that in Churchtown, Finglas or Clontarf there are professional people engaged in this area, but the point I am making is that there are not enough of these people involved. They have a very special contribution to make. Having mentioned that point here, and having awakened the thought in the minds of other speakers. I hope there will be a response which will reflect the real interest of those people in a fashion hitherto absent.
I am happy to report that the sporting organisations accept that headway is being made and that there is need for its continuation. Dublin is important for the reason that we have to cater for a large number of people. In respect of Santry Stadium I know we will have the interest and assistance of all Members of this House and, indeed, of local authorities. Certain progress has been made in the matter of the provision of facilities. In the matter of a metropolitan or national stadium I know that the work in progress at Santry Stadium will continue with the assistance of Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council so that in the years ahead we will all share the satisfaction of knowing that we have there an apex or pinnacle, a stadium where young people from different regions can meet and improve their skills, giving themselves the benefits deriving from true education; a healthy mind and body, when they will give to spectators, parents and others, the satisfaction which comes from watching young people perform so well having applied themselves with considerable sacrifice and dedication without which nothing can be properly achieved.
The whole area of educational debate is so wide there is need for us to discipline ourselves to what we have to say on a number of basic points. A number of issues come to my mind which I hope have not been dealt with extensively in the debate so far and which are worthy of some comment.
The history of educational debate is littered with all the evidence of a continuous power struggle between the various competing groups and interests in that field. I note that most of the debate, most of the contention, in fact the major part of controversy and discussion in that area is about structures, power, control and the system of management of education. I often think that, to a significant degree, this misses the very heart of education or what it is really about. It seems to me that quite often there is far too much politics involved in education and far too little real concern for the interests and needs of the children involved. I stress that I am not talking about party politics but about institutional politics, about competing rivalry for positions of power or influence. I would ask those organisations engaged in that process to consider to what degree this continuing struggle detracts from the primary obligations and concern of us all, which is of course the wellbeing of the child. There is a very strong argument which says that a little more attention to the heart of education—which is surely the quality of the relationship between the communicator and the pupil recipient —would be of benefit. To date I have often found—and this is becoming an increasing trend, perhaps understandably with today's type of society in which competition and aggression are not abnormal—that men and women involved in education, who entered the profession essentially to help children along their way, and today to help children and adults, find themselves bound up in disputes, contentions and rivalries, many of which have justifiable bases, but almost all of which detract from the quality of the educational environment of the pupil. That is very regrettable. I do not know if there is any easy way round it. Perhaps some kind of two-tiered structure which would allow the various negotiating and other processes to take place on the one hand while at the same time ensuring above all that that sacred relationship between teacher and pupil is in no way interfered with might succeed. This is not a new development. I can go back some years in this respect when always the hapless victim of all this was the child in the classroom who can be open to suffering or intimidation, depending on the issue.
There is now a particular need for us to ensure that we have a very strong and well developed sense of educational priority. I really believe that it has never been together to be a young person. This is due to the diminishing size of the world and the ease with which influence can now be wielded by organisations and so on, over many of which we have no control. These render our young people particularly vulnerable. We have to cope with this by educating them, arming then, helping them to mature and cope with the stresses and strains and, indeed, the assaults made on their vulnerability while at the same time ensuring that we play our part in seeing that such destructive influences are kept to a minimum. I am often very concerned by the casual manner in which young people's educational environment is handled. It is important to stress that education is not merely about what happens in the classrooms; it is about the total influence and communications effect on a child during its waking and, perhaps, even arguably some of its sleeping hours. Too often there is evident a rigid approach to education, one that says a child is being educated from 9 o'clock in the morning until 4.15 in the afternoon, with a break for lunch, and thereafter nobody is responsible. I do not think that is right.
I regret very much what I consider to be some omissions on the part of the present administration. However, I do realise that this is not an easy area for Ministers. For some reason, not difficult to define but nevertheless very regrettable, the political process tends to be destructive towards educational priorities, tends to insist on a high level of political delivery within the five-year cycle of elections; that above all we must deliver on people's wants and, perhaps, people's needs become secondary.
All of us know that investment in education and commitment of resources, ideas and idealism will not pay off within five years. We are speaking here about building for future generations, which requires a special kind of both wisdom and courage. I very much regret that over the last three years a much more qualitatively concerned approach to education has not been taken. I firmly believe that the too often heard plea of inadequacy of resources is an excuse for either a lack of ideas or inertia. Much progress could be brought about in education without necessarily the expenditure of any more of our resources than at present. This can be done in two ways. It is time to ask how the money is already being spent in education and whether or not value for money is being obtained. An analysis of this would indicate that there may be other ways in which the present allocation could be spent—in certain respects with better results but more profoundly in the area of the curriculum in the schools and indeed the curriculum to some extent outside the schools. The need for new school places simply cannot be met—and there is no point in any Minister or Member of an Opposition party pretending that it can be—on the simple basis of building more schools regardless of the size of the population. That is not going to happen and has not happened. One of the results is that we are inhibited from tackling the problems of educational deprivation because if we did tackle them it would mean a massive increase on even the existing school building programme.
The estimated primary education demand in the Dublin sub-region alone—and I am quick to point out, and the Minister would be even quicker, that Dublin is not all of Ireland by any means—in the next ten years will be for between 25 and 31 32-unit size schools and 26 new community schools. Take a total figure of 50 and that building rate is of the order of five new schools per year. That is not realistic. While some progress must be made and every effort must be made to build these schools, other approaches to the problem should be looked at.
I will get back to the basic point, the question of the manner in which we organise the educational content imparted by the teacher to the pupil. At present the irony of it all is that the classroom as we know it is a most unnatural teaching and learning environment—a square room, with five rows of six desks in which sit children, generally of one sex, all dressed similarily, all programmed to respond between certain hours on certain given subjects, designed to suit the administration of the school or some other need far removed from a concern as to whether or not the child is actually able or willing to learn or interested in learning during that period. This unnatural educational environment, which nevertheless has had success sometimes despite itself, is one which needs looking at.
Much greater flexibility in the use of educational resources is clearly called for. There is no justification for our schools being closed more often than they are open and for the fact that there is not far more imagination about the structure of imparting that educational content. I believe it would be enthusiastically received by teachers and students if a programme were to be developed which would allow for much greater out of school activity and perhaps more informal approaches to the timetable which would allow for development in situ, as it were, wherever possible of the educational skills, content and curriculum.
Take, for example, civics in school. The Minister said in answer to Dáil Questions—the dates of which I can produce if necessary—that he was satisfied with the manner in which civics was being taught in the school. I do not agree with him. Without wishing to reflect on the teachers—far be it from me to reflect on those who have been my colleagues and might very well be again, even sooner than some of us believe—I believe that civics is not treated as seriously as it should be in the classroom by the children and by some teachers because of the pressures on them of the examination system and also for another very obvious reason, sometimes not articulated. Civics is to some extent about social relations and institutional relations of the way of life of the community. I, as a teacher in that subject, had difficulties in trying to communicate how, for example, courts worked or how, indeed, this House worked. The teacher had three-quarters of an hour in which to do it, when the obvious and logical way was to take half a day and visit the place, or be able to participate in some sort of process of class education on the location if possible. It is not always possible to do that, but there is certainly room for development there. The rigid structure at present does not allow a teacher to do this, which means that education is inhibited as a result. Schools, and particularly secondary schools which are relatively slow in this regard, should be developed to be a much more integral part of the community. The vocational and community schools are certainly ahead in this regard, but even with them there is room for improvement. There is no reason why much more encouragement and development of second chance and adult education and, indeed, young people's education cannot be given in hours which are not traditional if this happens to suit the local needs. The manner in which our schools are used will have to be reviewed in the light of present pressures on resources.
A few years ago I visited Denmark and was impressed by the manner in which their schools were used all round the year. If, for example, school children were not occupying classrooms at a certain time, these were used for another purpose. Old people were given holidays in them during the summer, which is obviously not suitable for everywhere. There were various classes or career development courses, further possibilities for the structure of which we are discussing. After all the system is publicly funded and, ultimately, publicly owned and in the hands of the various authorities on behalf of the public by whom they are entrusted with the responsibility. Inevitably the enormous pressures on the Minister for Education of the need to put new resources into the system will mean that we must have a much more imaginative and flexible approach to school buildings.
I should like the Minister to embark on a major programme of curricular overhaul. There are attractions in that for him. He knows from his own experience that a curriculum constantly needs overhauling and major amounts of money are not needed for this. Many things of importance today are not talked about in schools or are only talked about because as individual teachers we believe they should be; but this is done always at the risk of cutting back on examination areas. I mean areas like sociology, social relations, human relations, political science, sensible courses designed to help people to spend money wisely, to be able to purchase homes and look after themselves in business careers and in marriage. All these areas are often very scantily dealt with in the classroom.
I know that there are domestic science courses and various tentative approaches to tackling the subject in some schools, often for one sex only. The reality is that these areas and many others that one could mention, like basic philosophy, are the cornerstone and kernel of our education, as is the assisting of young people to be able to cope later on with the environmental development. These are often tacked on to the major subjects and we have young school leavers able to talk about the root of a latin verb and give theorems in trigonometry, algebra and geometry and not able to go about buying a house and, in my case,—as in the case of many male students—not even being able to boil an egg. Changes are coming about in that respect and, if they are, it is not before time.
The more basic problem in this area is as it always has been, namely, that Irish education for all the progress that has been made by various governments and authorities is in some cases at least socially divisive. It divides communities perhaps because it is sometimes socioculturally elitist. It is heavily weighed with inequalities. It is substantially undemocratic in structure and control. It is arguable to what extent it serves the needs of young people going through the system. It is not as flexible as it should be to respond to clear needs. For example, in terms of pupil-teacher ratio or investment resources, it continues to define the problems of Gweedore in Donegal as being the same as the problems of Gardiner Street in Dublin when they are different and when they need a different response. The fact that this practice is not more or less so than in other European countries is no consolation. Therefore, the area of challenge and of exciting innovation for a Minister for Education is almost infinite and such demands cannot be met by plaintive bleatings about the lack of resources. There is no reason why the curriculum cannot be overhauled to ensure that it is what the young people need. There is an intuitive dimension to young people that will respond, in a way not being done in classrooms today, to a more enlightened approach.
A flexible approach towards school buildings and the curriculum is particularly appropriate when it comes to some aspects of educational deprivation. These have been well authenticated and documented. Studies that come to mind include Miceál Mac Gréil's Educational Opportunity in Dublin and the study by the Department of Education on education in disadvantaged areas. There is a volume of material that does not need vindication about the fact that there are traditionally ingrained patterns of educational deprivation in certain areas and in what were traditionally called “classes” of people.
Why is this and how can we tackle it? The question of equality of opportunity and equality of access is vital. It is more than simply making available a place in a school, hoping that on the appointed day the child will turn up. Researches carried out by the School Attendance Department of Dublin Corporation show clearly that their work is predominantly occupied with certain social groupings in certain geographical areas. The same is true of the School Attendance Departments in Cork and Limerick. The reality is that young people in these areas feel—and to some extent they are almost genetically conditioned—that the educational structure presented to them is alien to them. It has nothing for them; it is a value and a culture outside their experience and that of their parents. We must meet this but not by building more schools which they have already demonstrated is not the right response.
I recall reading Dowling's book Hedge Schools of Ireland and this gave me a very deep respect for the hedge schools of years ago. I have long felt that a flexible and responsible approach to the needs of young people in the areas I have described might be to produce a modern equivalent of that type of school. I believe it would be better if a teacher went into the community and if he or she sat on the steps of a block of flats with six children and introduced them to the wonderful world of books, texts, pictures and stories—all of those exciting things we had as part of the fabric of our childhood—rather than continuing to insist on imposing our values, beliefs and structures on categories of people who will not, because they cannot, accept them. If such an approach were made it would be experimental. I believe it would work but if it did not something else should be tried.
I was recently involved in an attempt to get a project going. What was involved was the purchase of two double-deck buses that could be converted to mobile bus schools for the areas I mentioned. Dr. Barnardo's bus scheme for pre-school age children is working well and it was from that type of concept that this idea of mine developed. The response from the local community was very good but unfortunately between the Dublin Corporation, the vocational education committee and the Department of Education I am not sure what has happened. I suggested this project 16 months ago and, as yet, I have no evidence that it is coming to fruition.
It was an attempt to go into communities where there is much educational deprivation. I want the House to remember that in some of these areas the number of children not participating in the educational process is shockingly high. I do not want to exaggerate but in some cases it is staggering. The Mac Gréil study on educational opportunity in Dublin shows that parts of these areas have figures as high as 75 per cent where children do not go on even to first year in secondary school. From my involvement with prison visiting committees, I know there is a marked similarity between those who get into juvenile delinquency and crime in later years and those who are educationally deprived. That shows the enormous advantages that would be gained by enabling more people to participate in the educational process.
I appeal to the Minister and his Department—I know they have goodwill in this area—to consider a much more flexible approach and even to risk being wrong. Wrong has been done to so many young people by all of us as a society and community by insisting on investing a disproportionately large amount of available funds for the educational advancement of those who are more articulate, stronger and vociferous relative to those who are not at all articulate and who are weaker and divided. That needs remedying. It will pay enormous dividends if it is tackled. There are many possibilities apart from different types of curricula, a different type of school structure, a different assignment of teachers in the area and different types of course. We have the ability to see the malleability of the education process, to shape it to the ends of the young people rather than having the young people merely being asked to respond to structures that were set up years ago on thinking and on a philosophy which may at this stage be no longer relevant. I would be grateful for improvement in this area. Even in the mercenary language of paying dividends, the return would be enormous and would be a wonderful legacy to whichever Minister for Education was willing to embark on such a challenge of ridding ourselves once and for all of deprivation in education in young people. This may even need positive discrimination in favour of parents who see no value in education for their children because they may not have got it themselves, the people in the low income brackets who need the money generated by 13-year-olds in various types of jobs. It may also need a system which would take cognisance of the vacuum created by children who had helped in the home in this way, but will no longer be there. That is a very small price indeed to pay for the results that would emerge.
There are many challenges in education and it is a fascinating area. In relation to the attempts at democratisation in education at a structural level and the controversy over the deeds of trust of community schools, it is not in the public interest not to have available to interested parties copies of the deeds when they are requested. The public have a right to know in all matters where they have a genuine interest. I am aware of efforts made by people with a long time interest as full-time educators in society to obtain copies of these documents and they have not been able to obtain them. There is even a suggestion that some kind of legal proceedings are being pursued to obtain such copies. It is in the best interests of us all to put all the cards on the table all of the time.
The whole area of remedial education is very difficult for the Minister and for society. There is a legacy of deprivation and neglect which the Minister has to deal with and I would appeal to him to do something about it. I know that the Minister can only appeal to some of his colleagues to facilitate him with regard to the need for increased resources to ensure that those who are genuinely disadvantaged and in need of remedial education will get the opportunities. There should not be a situation where young people in need of remedial teaching can go through the whole system without being spotted and looked after in a special way when the need arises. Big improvements have been made over the last ten years in that regard.
I am concerned about the question of the pattern of school closures. So far this year we have not had too much bad news in that regard but there are ominous rumblings from some quarters. Because of the nature of the school and the possibility and desirability of encouraging the school to be a much more ingrained part of the community than it has been up to now, in some cases it is imperative that the danger of schools closing down should be resisted if possible. The school authorities such as the Christian Brothers and the nuns have invested their lives and their resources in their commitment to education and it is unfair and unjust to ask them to shoulder the responsibility of trying to run increasingly uneconomic schools. In some cases they feel constrained to seek an increasing voluntary contribution from parents who have to send their children to them. That is very much opposed to the spirit of our education system and it should be dispensed with.
If a school which is part of the community is no longer viable in the traditional manner in which it has been run we must look at ways and means of making it viable so that it can continue to serve, admittedly, in some cases, the diminishing inner city community while at the same time in off school hours it can be used for educational courses for which people can pay. Will the Minister consider the possibility of alternative uses of such schools? In this way the revenue generated would help to offset the cost involved in the running of the schools in the traditional sense. If the worst came to the worst the school could be reduced in size. It is a pity to see the attempt to consolidate resources in the new sprawling suburban areas, at a cost to communities already under pressure. The school is the cornerstone of the community and when that goes many other bricks crumble. Only after exhausting every possible alternative should the Minister allow a school to close. I appeal to the Minister to consider some form of initiative in this regard. It is not good enough to say that the school is privately owned and run by a management outside of our control and then just let things take their course. It is too important an issue for the whole community to adopt a laissez-faire approach.
I am sad that we still have not removed VAT from school books. I appreciate that this is a matter for the Minister for Finance but he says it is a matter to be discussed on the budget and when I try to discuss it on the budget I get nowhere. Will the Minister for Education ask his colleague to co-operate with him in this regard in view of the increasingly spiralling cost of school books? There is need for a radical improvement in regard to school books generally. Will the Minister consider the introduction of what is known as the core system which would allow the school to give those core books, the basic building blocks, to the pupils who would return them when they were finished with them? At present many young people and their parents are forced to buy large anthologies which cost from £4 to £7 each, they use very little of the anthology, and in some cases it is an anthology which cannot be used over a number of years. There is a need for the Department of Education, as the responsible body for education, to heed the trends in educational publishing and the costs involved. They are prohibitive and excessive for some firms. Relatively speaking, they are good value, but the reality is that one child sitting beside another in class should never have to go without the basic necessities of educational advancement because of costs. Perhaps the core system is a way forward and perhaps there are alternatives. It certainly is a matter of concern.
There has been much talk lately about the need for the development in education of a technological response to emerging needs in industry, commerce and so on. In the Dublin Vocational Education Committee, which are responsible for a number of technical colleges, we are very conscious of the need to ensure that the educational system will not be totally alien and removed from the needs of the market place.
In an article he wrote in Technology Ireland, the Minister wrote in May 1979 that the growing need for skilled manpower is constantly stressed by the various agencies concerned. He went on to develop that theme in a sensible way. I suggest that we should be on our guard against being pressurised into turning our schools into mini-factories or mini-apprentice shops. There is a balance to be aimed at. We must be aware of what the community are likely to need and yet understand that education in itself is a good thing which should not now or in the future be subjugated totally to the commercial needs of the market place which are often very transient and ephemeral. What may be popular today may not be popular tomorrow, leaving high and dry many people relatively skilled in a specific aspect of technology. I do not think there is any danger of it happening, but the language and the tone of some comments made in that general area make us aware that there is need for a guarded balance here.
I could not agree more.
The Minister of State dealt with the area of physical education, sport, and I should like to commend him on his efforts in that respect and to wish him luck. He is, of course, carrying on the good work begun by Deputy Bruton. It is a very important element in education and we hope the Minister of State will be successful.
The area of adult or second-chance education is fast developing one whose scope needs future publicising. As one who has the honour to be chairman of a school board in the Marino-Killester area, I can say that it is an enormously satisfying thing to be able to say to a community: "If a small number of you are interested in a specific course, be it yoga, parachuting or Greek, we will endeavour to provide the service". There are basic courses for literacy, numeracy and so on, available today and I add to the appeals to the Minister to let people know that the courses are there and that they are for the good of all of us, if people participate in them. Once people participate they achieve the dignity of people with a whole new world opened to them.
I spoke to a gentleman on one occasion who explained to me in a way I could not understand until then what it meant to be illiterate. It does not mean that you cannot read books, which was the simple definition of illiteracy that I had always held. It involves simple problems, like not knowing which shop one should go to as a child, because the child could not read the signs; it means you are not sure which street you are in or which bus to get—an enormous alienation from so many of the things most of us take for granted. These courses are there and I appeal to the Minister to advertise them a little more. It may be the responsibility of the VECs. We will not talk about the VECs today because we spoke about them yesterday. They do not feel particularly flush at the moment. They have received a couple of snorters from the Department which they are mulling over and which will not encourage them to be too generous with advertising funds for the time being.
There is so much that is good and positive to be gained from the strong assertion of the fundamental role of education in the community that I should like to express the hope that the traditional role of education has not been given a very high political or social profile. I have never understood this. I have always felt that in education we have the seeds virtually of solving all our problems, not just in terms of human relations but economic and social matters as well. No matter which problem we have, it will be left eventually to men educated, in the literal sense of that Latinistic word, to be solved. Therefore it is in all our interests to do everything possible to further the spread of knowledge, to make it more easily accessible and to make the resources of education more widely available. I wish the Minister well in his efforts in that regard.
First of all I should like to deal with children who are moderately handicapped. I had a case recently in my constituency of a child who was assessed, after representations had been made by me on his behalf, as being moderately handicapped. He was admitted to a school for the moderately handicapped, for children who have a considerable degree of learning disability. What concerns me about the case is that the child had not been tracked down in the normal national school he was attending until he was 12 years of age. It is a matter of serious concern to me that the child could have been in contact with teachers for six years, and presumably with school inspectors, yet the fact that he was moderately handicapped was not tracked down.
I was surprised to learn this. I had thought from my knowledge of the area that the system for locating these children was far better than this and that this was a case that should not have happened. I should like to know whether the Minister is satisfied that the case I have mentioned is an isolated one. If children are passing through our system without being identified as being mentally handicapped and in need of special education, when they reach the age of 12 it is very often too late to do what otherwise could have been done for them, because the earlier they begin to be treated specially the more likely they are to achieve their maximum potential. It is possible that far from getting special attention in a national school, if a handicapped child is left in a normal class it is more likely he will get less attention than the normal child in the class, and that is a bad thing.
I have indicated in the House before the need to introduce some sort of test at the end of the national school cycle. At present all children pass from the national school to the secondary school without any test as to whether they are capable of reading or writing or of doing basic arithmetic. I am convinced—secondary school teachers will bear me out—that many children enter secondary schools without having an adequate educational base. If there was a system of objective testing of children on a national basis, say at the age of ten or earlier, for certain basic skills, not with a view to pensalising them in any way if they do not pass or of issuing certificates which would seek to brand them in some pejorative fashion, but simply in order that some special educational aid be given to them in time, we would be doing a great service. Children who have learning disabilities would be identified at the age of nine or ten instead of not being identified until they enter secondary school or in some cases until they take the first comprehensive examination, the group certificate, when they are 14 or 15 years of age. The fact that children can pass through a school career of eight or nine years without any comprehensive test being put to them means that there are grave risks, such as the one I mentioned of the child who was not identified as being moderately handicapped until he was 12 years of age, being run. A system of comprehensive testing should be introduced at the age of ten and possibly a less sophisticated one at an earlier age.
Teachers might fear this in that it might be seen as an interference with their professional responsibility or if a large percentage of the children failed to pass the test it would be a reflection on them. It should not be interpreted as such. Some teachers have more difficult groups of children to deal with than others. Something like that is necessary to identify these children in time and give them help rather than have them pass through the school system without benefiting from it at all.
The Minister should look into the standards in primary school building. About 15 years ago it was decided, in the interests of the new school curriculum, that the amount of space per pupil should be two-and-a-half times the amount of space previously deemed necessary in school buildings which had been built prior to that date. This decision was probably taken at a low level and without very much deliberation. It has increased by two-and-a-half times the cost of school buildings built since the decision was taken. A large amount of educational resources that could be used in employing teachers, teacher aids or helping to put more technological aids into schools to assist children in a more personal fashion, is being tied up in school building because someone decided 15 or 20 years ago that the amount of space being provided was not sufficient.
In view of the high costs associated with heating large buildings the time has come to reassess this building standard. It has also come from the point of view of energy conservation. Are we satisfied that school buildings are being built in order to conserve energy to the maximum extent? At present the cost of heating schools falls on the parents of the children in the locality. If the schools have not been properly insulated this will mean a larger parental contribution towards education. That is very bad. A lot of money could have been saved if the Department had insisted on higher insulation standards when the schools were being built. When were insulation standards for national schools last reassessed? Have they been substantially changed since the energy crisis of 1973? If they have not, I would charge the officials and Ministers concerned with not doing their job.
Reference was made to the wisdom or otherwise of sending children to school at the age of four. Some people argue it is right to do so and others feel that from an educational point of view of actually learning skills, reading, writing, arithmetic and so on, children do not derive very much benefit in strict educational terms from the ages of four to six. It is from the age of six onwards that the major educational value is obtained by children. It is equally argued that between four and six years of age children get benefits from learning to live with other children and not thinking that they are living in a totally self-centred world which they would think if they remained at home up to the age of six with only their mother and, occasionally, their father to talk to. There is a different function to be performed by schools in respect of children under the age of six and those over it.
Educational research will bear me out in saying that major advances educationally are made after the age of six. If children get a head start in learning to read at the age of three or four over children who do not start until age six—I have not done any research on this subject myself—I am advised that the head start is eliminated by the time the children reach the age of ten.
It is possible that those who have the head start would drop back.
Sin ceist eile. Instead of bringing children to school at the age of four, the Department should say that they would allocate money that would otherwise be spent providing places for children between the ages four to six to local play schools in the area much nearer to the children's homes. In an estate one could be provided in every street so that children would not have to travel long distances. Instead of spending money on building a large school and bringing all the children from four upwards into a central school, it could be spent on giving continuous grants to play schools which could be provided in a home run by some parent in the locality. Play schools providing for children between the ages four and six have a different job to do. Their job is socialisation; the job of schools is education. The Department should consider this experiment to see if a better job could be done by having them separated in the way I suggested. I do not advocate this reform on a totally comprehensive scale because it might not work. However, there is room for experimentation like this in education. All the research being done is based on academic study of what is happening at present, on theoretical work, surveys and so on. There are no action research projects being carried out.
In determining the number of teachers that should be allocated to a school only children over compulsory school attendance age should be counted. At present the situation is that in deciding how many teachers a school should get the Department take into account children from the age of four upwards. In many cases this means that parish priests or members of the school management board go about campaigning and pressuring parents to send children to school at the age of four in order to get an additional teacher appointed to the school. This happens whether or not the parent wants to send the school to school at the age of four. The parents may be quite satisfied that they can educate the children better at home or in some sort of play school arrangement. Whilst providing the same number of teachers overall, if in computing the distribution of teachers one simply took account of children over age six, this artificial pressure to send children to school at the age of four regardless of whether a parent believes this is the best thing, could be removed. I would like to see that change made.
Has the Deputy spoken to many mothers about this?
I am merely advocating removal of an artificial incentive. Obviously, the freedom of parents to send their children to school at the age of four should be maintained, but any artificial pressure to send them to school against their wishes in order to satisfy the local PP or the local management board so that they can get an extra teacher should be removed. The parents should be able to make a completely balanced choice based solely on the interests of their own child.
I congratulate the Minister and his Minister of State on the increased money being spent on the provision of sports facilities. As the House is aware, I had responsibility in this area for a number of years and I did not succeed in getting as much money for sports facilities as is being spent now. I offer a few suggestions rather than criticisms.
I would be slightly afraid that what the Department are doing now with a lot of money—and a great deal of money is being spent on sports facilities by the Department and other agencies including AnCO—is throwing money at the problem without being sure whether the end result will be an increased participation by people in sport or an increased level of fitness in the community. The money is being spent without any real policy. If somebody applies for a grant to build a certain facility, then if the money is there and it is going to create employment the grant will be given regardless of whether it is necessarily, in a comprehensive view of increasing sports participation in the community, the best way of spending the money. What is dictating is, "Get the money out quick so that jobs can be created", regardless of whether providing that particular facility is the best way of spending money.
In sports policy of late there seems to be an increasing emphasis on the provision of physical facilities such as tracks, pavilions and so on and not enough is being spent on personnel, on physical education teachers and on organisers in the sports organisations. After all, usually what persuades people to take up a sport is not the existence of a facility down the road but the existence of a local club, individual or friend who says, "Why do you not come along and play squash—or tennis or football? Why do you not join our team?" The critical factor in getting people to take up sport is not the physical existence of a facility. It is a person who approaches another person and asks him or her to join in some sporting activity. Far too little emphasis is put on development of personnel resources and on people who will motivate the community to participate in sport. Our country is very rich in natural sporting facilities.
Nearly all the various sports are concerned with outdoor pursuits which need few or no artificial facilities. What is needed is people in the community who know enough about sport to go out and encourage other people to take it up. I am afraid that at the end of this decade the number of people participating in sport may be no greater than it would have been if none of this money had been spent on facilities because they will not have been this personal follow-up to the initial impetus to provide the facilities many of which may end up disused because of lack of this organisational human follow-up.
The amount of money being spent on sports by Departments other than the Department of Education is not being co-ordinated adequately with the Department. Involved in the provision of sports facilities are the Department of the Environment and all the local authorities associated with them, Bord Fáilte who are providing facilities from a tourist point of view, the forestry and wildlife services who provide outdoor facilities in their parks and so forth relevant to sport, and the Department of Defence who provide sporting facilities for the military. All are going their separate ways and there is not real co-ordination in the line of any national sports policy. In the policy document on sports policies which we published before the last General Election I proposed the setting up of a sports council which would bring all of these Departments together in one council. All the Departments of State who spent any money on sport would be together in one council and all moneys spent on sport or sport-related activities by any Department or local authority would be channelled through this council, who would not have control over it but at least would have the opportunity of advising the Government directly on whether this investment in sport by all the various Departments would achieve any national target for increased sports participation.
The present Government abandoned that idea completely and set up a sports council related only to the Department of Education, not containing representatives of the other Departments to any great degree and consisting mostly of sports personalities. That council mainly are assisting and advising the Department of Education on their input to the sporting scene, which is only part of the total picture. It would have been far better to have stuck to the original concept of a sports council which would involve all of these Departments and would be concerned not solely with educational activities but with the entire range of sporting activities. Then there would be a better policy and a better return for the overall investment in sports facilities by the entire range of Government.
There should be some system for objective assessment of results. We want to know whether all of this money is achieving increased sports participation and increased levels of fitness amongst the community. There should be some study, perhaps by the National College of Physical Education, to establish certain base line data about the number of people participating in sport in the community in different age grounds and the fitness level of different age groups in the community. Having established certain base line data for, say, 1980, we could then see how we were proceeding with our policy over the next five to ten years and if the spending of all this money was achieving results. If, in carrying out another survey in 1985 or 1990, it was found that, despite all the spending, there had been no improvement in fitness standards in the community and still the same proportion of people were participating in sport, we would know that the money was wasted. We are not doing this at the moment. We have not got the base line data or the system of assessment of expenditure and as a result we could be wasting the money completely and not even know that we are wasting it.
In Government I was responsible also, with others, for the establishment of youth encounter projects. These were concerned with young people who did not attend school and had problems with the school attendance authorities. These were established in Dublin. The novelty of these youth encounter projects was that they were effectively a system of informal school for children who could not fit into the formal school system. The idea was to make these places more attractive and provide a more intensive pupil-teacher ratio and a more concerned environment where children who could not fit into the normal school could at least fit into this system which was more appropriate to their problems. This idea had been tried previously but the novelty of these new encounter projects was that instead of being run by the Department of Education or by a school they were to be run by a youth organisation. The Catholic Youth Council undertook to run two of them in Dublin, one in Finglas and I cannot remember where the other one was. There was another in Cork and another again in Limerick. All were run by youth organisations. The idea was that not only should professional personnel be involved but youngsters, members of youth organisations who, perhaps, would not be much older than the children who had school attendance problems, would be involved with those young people in assisting them on a peer basis to get over their difficulties. I understand that the project is working very well, with one caveat, that the youngsters, as distinct from the professionals, are not involved in the projects. It appears that the Catholic Youth Council have taken on this as another additional task and are using professional staff to operate it. Although it is one of the agencies of that council it is separate from its normal activities. The youngsters involved in council work generally are not involved in helping those with problems. That is a bad thing and the Minister should make an effort to do something about it.
The Department are concerned with any attempt to solve the problem of poverty in our society. It has been the experience of the most advanced countries that poverty continues to exist in their communities in the midst of plenty. In Germany and America poverty exists in this manner. Families who are poor beget children who, after a bad start in life, grow up to be poor. There is a type of sub-culture of poverty in existence in such communities alongside great wealth. At the root of this problem is education because the children, if they come from poor homes, do not get a good education and never break out of the class into which they were born. If adequate education is provided for them much can be done to break this continuous, vicious and recurrent cycle of poverty. All of us, living in our relatively comfortable homes, could be passing parts of this city daily where huge poverty exists and be totally unaware of its existence.
It is in order for the Deputy to make a passing reference to this matter but to try to hang it on one word, education, and make a speech on poverty is not correct.
This problem will not be solved by one Department. Other Departments such as Health, Social Welfare and the Environment are involved. I would like to see all the Departments who are concerned with poverty getting together in a concerted campaign to eliminate poverty in our society. It should be done on the model of the National Board for Science and Technology. Many Departments are concerned with technology and they are brought together on that board for the co-ordination of their policies. Technology is important and it is right that we should have such a board to co-ordinate such activities but the elimination of poverty is more important. We should have a national board concerned with the elimination of poverty with all Departments involved. All moneys spent by any Department, particularly the Department of Education, on poverty or poverty-related projects should be funnelled through such a board so that there would be a concerted effort to eliminate poverty.
I do not believe that pilot schemes are the answer. As far as the educational aspect of the elimination of poverty is concerned the biggest problem is the atmosphere in the home. A favourable pupil-teacher ratio can be provided in schools in areas of deprivation and where a lot of children come from poor homes, as was done in the Rutland Street project, but such projects will not work because parents are not adequately involved. That was the experience in Rutland Street. The children went home from an atmosphere in school where education was the priority to an environment where nobody had the slightest interest in education, where the parents did not think education was worth anything but was just a way of passing the time until the children could earn a few bob, legitimately or otherwise, to keep going. In those homes there was no respect for education, no culture of education and no concern. It has been shown in many tests that children who come from homes where there is no interest in education do not do well while children of the same intelligence who come from homes where there is an interest in education do well.
To get to the root of the problem of educating children out of the poverty trap there must be more emphasis that there was in the past on parent education. The education of the parents of a child is more important in some cases than the education of the child. In areas where there is a heavy concentration of poor families and children who cannot break out of that cycle there should be a campaign for the education of parents to assist them to appreciate the value of education, what education can do for their children and, most important, what they can do for the education of their children. The parents, even those with very little education, can do as much if they have the right approach and assistance for the education of their children as any teacher can. The force that the love a parent has for a child can give is not being harnessed because the schools are not reaching out to parents. I would like to see something done in the centre areas of the city to have an outreach from the schools into the homes. That could come in the context of an inter-departmental campaign against poverty.
There must be a top level Government decision to harness the resources of all Departments against poverty in an effort to eliminate it. That does not necessarily mean spending huge amounts of money that are not being spent already; it means spending the money being used at present wisely. Reference has been made in the debate to the problem of second chance education, of adults returning to pick up where they left off or doing things they did not get a chance to do when at school. As far as second chance education is concerned a distinction must be made between that which is concerned with improving one's personal capacity to enjoy life—such as courses in art appreciation, basket work and French—and courses strictly related to one's ability to earn a living. Technology is changing so rapidly at present that people who qualify for a job this year may find that their qualifications are not worth anything in ten years time because the job they qualified for is no longer relevant to the needs of the community. There will be more of that and more people will need a second period of training in the midst of their career in order to get them ready for another job. They will have to take a second job because we will not be able to afford to carry people on in jobs which are no longer necessary. Such people can be carried on for a while but in the long run the community will not be able to afford it, particularly if the energy crisis hits us as hard as I believe it will.
We will not have the money to carry passengers of any description in our community. Therefore, we need a facility for "recycling" people in order to give them a second chance to get back into the system. People who are made redundant have so little money that they must take menial jobs to support their families. They have not got the money to enable them to take a year or two off to get an education in a new job and they have to take a job well below their mental capacity because they cannot afford time training for a better one, cannot take him off from work to do it.
I should like to see some system of educational insurance by which people would have a certain amount deducted from salary which would be put into a fund which they could cash at any time of their career and payment of which would take the form of paying them whatever they were earning prior to their taking time off for the year or two required for the further education. Obviously, certain controls would be needed—I have not thought out the scheme very thoroughly but some such system of insurance to provide people with an opportunity of getting not only money to pay for the course but money to maintain their standard of living is the only way to get this second-chance education going. It should be a self-financing scheme. The Department of Education should not have to provide these courses free. Some insurance system by which money could be deducted which would be cashed in in the form of further education at any time during their career would get over a lot of difficulties.
Coming more precisely to the actual Vote, I notice a cut-back in the amount of money provided for international activities. There is a cut of almost £50,000 in that amount. What economies do the Department propose to make in international activities? For instance, does it mean that we shall not pay our affiliation fees to UNESCO? Are we to cut back on contributions to Third World education or projects of that kind? Or does it mean fewer ministerial trips or trips by officials abroad? We should be told how these economies will be made because obviously they will be made. Economies should not be made at the expense of our contributions to the Third World. If they are made at the expense of our contributions to the balance sheets of airline companies that might be no harm.
Subhead C.1. refers to higher education grants. I have a complaint about higher education grants in regard to the farming community. At present farmers' eligibility for higher education grants is assessed on the basis not of income but of valuation. If a farmer has a valuation over £60—I think that is the figure—it does not matter if he earns nothing in a given year or if he consistently earns far less than the income level at which others in the community would qualify for these grants, he is eliminated and will not get a grant because his valuation is too high. In certain parts of the country the valuation system is completely out of line with actual capacity of land to earn money.
County Monaghan is a very good example. I took up a case from Monaghan with the Minister. As he knows, Monaghan valuations are highest of all by reference to actual ability of the land to earn money. He might have an interest in doing something about a matter that so greatly affects his own constituency. Quite a number of farmers' children in Monaghan cannot qualify for higher education grants because the valuation is too high even though they produce accounts substantiated by accountants to prove that they are not earning the amount supposed. If farmers are being taxed on actual accounts the Department should accept the same accounts for assessment for these grants.
Money for school books in all the Votes has been frozen at last year's level. The price of books will be going up by about 20 per cent this year which means that, as the amount available for free school books is frozen, many children who got books last year will not get them this year. How does the Minister propose to balance his books in that regard?
The increased amount provided for school transport is completely inadequate to meet the sum necessary to cover existing increases in diesel and fuel costs. Probably the Minister will have enough money to pay for school transport services up to June, but where will he get the money when September comes to make up the difference between what is necessary to maintain existing services and what he has provided? Will there be a cutback in school transport services? We are entitled to a definite answer on that at this point; otherwise, we run the risk that the money will not be forthcoming.
Under subhead G.1., I note that all the organisations which were previously funded separately are now lumped together in one fund. This means that the Dáil is being denied information about how the moneys for the individual bodies will be allocated. That is a bad thing. It means that the Minister will be able perhaps secretly to give them less than if he had to say it out openly.
I should like to see more agricultural courses in the regional colleges. The case in Waterford, where Kildalton College is co-operating to provide agricultural courses, is very good; but there should be far more of this. All regional technical colleges should provide agricultural education in conjunction with the local county committees of agriculture. Agricultural education should be based more in schools. Instead of having an agricultural education centre and a school education centre provided in the same town at twice the expense, the one building should be used for both.
Would the Minister comment on the relationship between Loughan House and Oberstown? When I was in the Department of Education the Oberstown school was designed to deal with the most difficult children then getting into trouble with the law and who were under school leaving age. Now, a place for even more difficult children has been provided at Loughan House. How is it decided whether a child should go to Loughan House of Oberstown? Has there been a tendency for Oberstown to pass on children that it would otherwise have accepted to Loughan House instead of trying to tackle their problems in the other environment?
In concluding, I ask the Minister to bring in a National Monuments Act to control the export of valuable objects. Archaeological objects and historic books can at present be exported freely. In theory the Minister has control to licence these exports but because of the inadequate drafting of the law he has been unable to exercise any control on valuable artefacts of Irish heritage. We need legislation to stop this. Many valuable items are leaving the country never to return, ending up in museums, in stately homes in America and Britain and Europe, thing that properly belong here, because there is not adequate control by the Minister for Education to stop them going out. He should introduce legislation to stop this trend. When in opposition the Minister's former leader, Deputy Lynch, was very concerned about this but when he returned to Government neither he nor the present Minister did anything about it.
I should like to see mounted in the county libraries more exhibitions by the National Museum, National Library and the other services. I was responsible for setting up exhibition centres for these national institutes, which was a good thing, but it would probably have been better to have based these exhibitions in the county libraries. There should be a co-ordination of the programme of new library building with the extension services, the Museum, the Library and the National Gallery so that every new library building contains an area specifically designed for exhibitions sent to it from the national cultural institutions. In that way we could have travelling exhibitions going right around the country bringing the material available in the national institutions in Dublin into the country, material which otherwise would not be displayed at all because there is not sufficient display space in the existing institutions while it could be displayed in provincial centres. I believe that can be done by co-ordinating the activities of the library service and those institutions. I would ask the Minister to take up this possibility with the Minister for the Environment.
Deputy McMahon. The Deputy may speak for about ten minutes. The Minister will have 45 minutes to reply and some minutes will be required to put the Estimates.
It is a great pity that the Estimate for the Department of Education is being restricted in this way. I am sure that every Deputy wishing to speak could spend at least ten hours on this subject. I accept that agreement has been reached and there is nothing a poor backbencher can do about it.
I would ask the Minister to be a little easier in the operation of regulations with regard to dealing with inquiries within his Department. When I make a simply inquiry I am told that my query should go through the Minister's office. I have no objection to this and I am not blaming the staff there, who have shown nothing but the greatest courtesy whenever I have had occasion to contact them. Very often I require greater speed than one can get from the Minister's office, and I say this without any reflection on the staff. They treat the inquiry as urgently as they can. But they must go to some other officer, who is asked to telephone me with the information. Very often I have left my office by the time this information becomes available and it may have been needed for a meeting to which I am already on my way. As the Minister knows, we very often have to leave home at the middle of the day to visit some other offices and attend a meeting on the way home. It is a great handicap to have to go to the Minister's office with a simple inquiry regarding sites or tenders for school buildings. Perhaps the Minister would look into this matter and consider whether simple queries could be answered by officers of his Department without the necessity of going through his office. There seems to be a tighter hold on the information which the Minister is prepared to let flow through his civil servants to public representatives.
I wish to make a case for giving greater attention to the area I represent, though I know that every Deputy could put forward a somewhat similar case. The Minister was a recent visitor to Tallaght and could not but have noticed the unusual amount of development taking place there. One of his predecessors, Richard Burke, gave particular attention to areas in County Dublin which were being built up at a fast rate. This is more important than most people realise. If there is any delay in the provision of sites or school buildings in these vast new housing estates, the areas will suffer for many years and find it difficult to get over the injury inflicted by the children having to leave the area to be educated elsewhere. When the school is eventually opened the parents are reluctant to remove their children from the existing schools. I would ask the Minister to take this into consideration when proposals come before him from these areas.
For some reason which I cannot ascertain from the Department there has been a very long delay in the sanctioning of St. Maelruan's Church of Ireland School at Tallaght. The search for a site by the Church of Ireland goes as far back as 1970 or 1971. Eventually they got a site which they hoped would be sanctioned but it was turned down because it was too narrow. Proposals have now been before the Minister for some months and a decision has not yet been made. Were it not for the fact that the Church of Ireland were facilitated in St. Mary's Primary School, these children would have had to travel to other areas such as Rathgar or Clondalkin. Were it not for the intervention of the Dominican Fathers in offering accommodation in the school on Greenhill's Road great upset would have been caused to this minority community by having to send their children in different directions. There seems to be some reluctance to allow this school to go ahead and I would ask the Minister to investigate the matter with a view to giving immediate sanction for the building of the school.
There is much controversy in County Dublin as to whether post-primary schools in the immediate future will be community schools, religious secondary schools or community colleges. If he even peeps into the problem the Minister will realise that any delay on his part will cause great confusion. A number of post-primary schools for County Dublin are in the pipeline. I was at a meeting recently attended by parents whose children will be the first pupils at the new school at Kilnamanagh due in 1984. They were told from the platform that they would have the choice as to what school should go on the site, which has already been purchased by the Department of Education. According to my files the Department have already dedided that this will be a community school. When I gave this information at the meeting most of those on the platform were surprised that the decision had already being made.
In all my letters from the Department of Education and from the county councillors who had correspondence from the Department with regard to the sale of the site, a community school is mentioned. Has a decision been made or do these parents still have a say in deciding what type of school it will be? They were told, even from the altar last Sunday, that they would still have a say in deciding whether it will be a community school or a religious secondary school. Could the Minister clear up that point?
I am giving this as an example of one of the many areas in County Dublin where there seems to be confusion and, if it is allowed to continue, I do not think it will add to the community spirit in the area. It is causing divisions. The Minister will agree that swift action on his part is needed to clear up the difficulties we are experiencing in County Dublin with one side lobbying for one thing and another lobbying for something else. Votes are being taken within housing estates. It is being claimed that certain people only will be asked. This produces a result which may not be a true indication of how parents in the area are thinking.
There is much more I should like to say and my own colleagues are as much to blame as anybody else for cutting me short.
An tAire Oideachais chun deireadh a chur leis an díospóireacht. The Minister has 45 minutes. He will finish at about three minutes to 4 o'clock giving him an opportunity to move the rest of the Estimates.
And perhaps deprive the educational system of even more money.
Ba mhaith liom at dtús a chur in iúl don Teach go bhfuilim an-bhuíoch do na Teachtai a labhair i rith na díospóireachta seo. Tugadh caoi dúinn Meastacháin na Roinne a phlé agus pléadh na Meastacháin agus pléadh go han-mhaith iad. I mo thuairimse tá sé an-thábhachtach an seans seo a bheith againn súil a chaitheamh siar ar imeachtaí na bliana atá thart agus scrúdú a dhéanamh ar na Meastacháin atá romhainn agus fiú amháin féachaint céard atá in ann dúinn sa todhchai. Tá sé tábhachtach don tir, mar a dúirt an Teachta Ó Flannagáin agus an Teachta de Valera, go gcuirfí cúram ar leith leis an gcóras oideachais agus leis na Meastacháin seo, agus go gcuirfí ar fáil don aos óg, na leanaí go léir, an córas is fearr atá ar ár gcumas a chur ar fáil dóibh.
Is maith an rud é gur cuireadh an oiread sin suime sa díospóireacht. Faoi mar a dúirt an Teachta McMahon cúpla nóiméid ó shin ní raibh a dhóthain ama aige chun a thuairimi a nochtadh don Teach cé go bhfuil dhá lá caite againn cheana féin ar na Meastacháin seo. Nochtadh anseo tuairimí éagsúla ar beagnach gach gné den chóras oideachais. Tá sé soiléir go dtuigtear go forleathan sa tír nach mór machnamh doimhin a dhéanamh ar chonas deileáil leis na ceisteanna achrannacha a thagann chun cinn, agus nach bhféadfaí bheith ag súil le freagraí simplisteacha i gcónai. Is mór an chabhair dom a thuiscint go bhfuil tacaíocht dom i leith pleananna a chuirfinn romham chun brú ar aghaidh le forbairt an oideachais sa tir, forbairt leathnú ar an gcóras.
Ba mhaith liom tagairt a dhéanamh go speisialta do roinnt pointí ar deineadh tagairt faoi leith dóibh le linn na diospóireachta a bhi againn. Laistigh den am atá ar fáil is é sin, suas go dtí trí nóiméid chun a ceathair, ni bheidh ar mo chumas deileáil ach le cuid acu. Ba mhaith liom a rá nach ndéanfar dearmad ar na pointí, ar na tuairimí a nochtaigh na Teachtaí anseo, fiú amháin muna bhfuilimse ábalta, mura bhfuil faill agam anois, deileáil leo go díreach.
There was some talk about the capital programme and there was a little bit of the caterwaul about the moneys committed and the moneys spent by the Government on the capital side of these Estimates. I should like to put on the record of the House what we have done with regard to capital expenditure, and the facts will speak for themselves. The amount available for capital expenditure in 1975 was £26.24 million; in 1976, it was £27.98 million; in 1977, it was £37.36 million; in 1978, it was £46.92 million; and in 1979, an all-time high, it was £53.11 million. The House can see in those figures that we have almost doubled the capital commitment since we took office in 1977.
This is no small effort on the part of the Government. This is no small commitment to capital development. It should be recorded in the House and emphasised. I do not blame Opposition spokesmen for trying to make the most of the debate. That is what the debate is about. That is the way our system of democracy works. As I said, facts are very stubborn. It is impossible to get over them. I have put facts on the record of the House which can be checked by any Deputy.
I believe I should not deal individually with specific cases to which reference may have been made during the debate. To do so would give the wrong impression that an advantage may be gained for a particular school, or development, or extension, over others by having that case mentioned specifically during the course of the debate. We can see what that could lead to. In future debates we could have a queue and all Deputies would have to do would be to shout the name of a school and ipso facto pressure would be brought to bear on the Department.
As I have said to deputations when reference was made to this matter, there is no basis for making a direct comparision between the total allocation for capital expenditure as between any two years. I explained that the commitment carries over, and expenditure in any year is related to a programme extending over a longer period than that year, since, in general, projects may take two to three years to complete. Even if the period is relatively short, never the less it will span at least two years, when the building work commences some time during the course of the first year and ends during the course of the next year.
The volume of work in any year will include projects newly started, projects in progress, and projects being completed. Expenditure will be very much affected by the proportion of cases which major projects constitute of the whole, and the stage which has been reached in a specific programme. By way of concrete example—no pun intended—I might recall, in connection with such projects, reference made during the course of the debate to the provision in 1980 as compared with 1979 under subhead D. 1. of Vote 34 capital expenditure on non-HEA projects. In 1979 the provision for expenditure related to work in progress on the construction of Cork Dental Hospital and of Thomond College. Since the building of the dental hospital advanced towards completion in that year provision for payment for the final stage only is required in 1980. Thomond College is a designated institution now under the HEA and capital expenditure on it comes within subhead A.2. of that vote so that a simplistic look at the subhead does not give the real story. I should emphasise also that it is proper that Departments of State should, in circumstances of general inflationary pressures, seek to set a brake on the upward surge of prices. I must ensure that tenders accepted for the purpose of the placing of contracts are reasonable and I must not allow myself to give into pressures merely to obviate delays. My Department and the Office of Public Works must insist on compliance with the specified cost limits even if such insistence involves delays in the placing of contracts in some cases. I am saying that in the context of a particular tender being way out of range of the cost limits as laid down in the Department and by the Office of Public Works in the case of primary school buildings. I have stated already that we cannot take a simplistic view of the cost from year to year. One might find in 1980, for instance, better value in a tender than would have been the case in a 1979 tender despite the fact that from a simplistic point of view one might be inclined to assume that the better value would be got from the 1979 tender, taking inflation in the meantime into consideration.
The estimate for 1980 was prepared on the basis of information available at the time at which it was calculated. In the circumstances of 1980 particular care must be taken to relate the rate of expenditure at all stages during the year to the anticipated expenditure outcome for the year. Such an approach is one which is readily accepted and regarded as essential in business and commercial circles. It must also assume a greater emphasis in relation to State expenditure. Regard must be had to a phasing of the seeking of tenders and the placing of contracts so as not to create unfavourable influences on price levels for capital projects. The Department will be aware at all times of deadlines for the opening of individual schools and will bear these deadlines in mind in connection with giving sanction for the next step to be taken in the case of individual schools.
As one would have expected, Deputies on the opposite side of the House tried to emphasise what they regarded as reductions in the Estimates for this year but as I have stated in the case of the capital budget applies equally in the case of current expenditure, that is, that facts are facts and the overriding incontrovertible fact is that the Estimates for 1980 show an increase of 24.6 per cent over the 1979 Estimates. That is money that is provided. There cannot be any question of doubt about it and no amount of irrelevancy can cloud the fact.
Deputy Collins referred to the fact that only £270 per pupil is spent at primary level and said this was an indication that we are not giving priority to our primary schools. Let me say first that the average cost per pupil in national schools is a reflection of class size. The cost of teaching and superannuation in the education sector as a whole represents more than 80 per cent of the total current expenditure. Classes in primary schools are necessarily larger than those at second level, particularly those at senior cycle. This pattern of class size and corresponding lower-per-pupil expenditure in primary schools is not unique to this country. It is repeated worldwide.
So far as priority is concerned, surely the provision in the Estimate for the employment of an additional 600 teachers this year—300 specifically to reduce the size of classes—is an indication of where my priority lies. My programme for the reduction of class size is on target and by 1981-82 there will be sufficient teachers in the primary schools, given appropriate school organisation, to meet my stated objective. It is as well to remember, too, that over vast areas of the country there are pupil-teacher ratios of 14 to 1. We should keep this balancing factor in mind when we talk of the problem in some areas in which there are very large classes.
Would the Minister be referring to Whitechurch school which, two years ago, had nine pupils?
I do not know what the Deputy is referring to but if there were nine pupils and one teacher in the school he has in mind, the ratio was 9 to 1. It is a iam res patet.
On this matter of the average cost per pupil in the different sectors of education, I must confess to being baffled by the lack of logic of Deputy Collins. He talked on the one hand about the need to give priority to primary education and then he referred to the average cost per pupil of £510 for secondary schools compared with a figure of £660 for vocational schools and £560 in community and comprehensive schools. He then went on to say that the secondary schools were losing out and that there was a need for a huge investment in this area. He stated that the vocational schools have done extremely good work and he wondered whether there was a bias in the Department in favour of community schools at the expense of vocational schools. A new musical-chair philosophy seems to have been born.
When comparing the average cost per pupil in the different sectors of education, one must be careful to ensure that like is compared with like. It is necessary to distinguish between the characteristics of each sector, for example, the adult educational aspect of vocational and community schools, the provision for technical subjects in vocational schools and the need for smaller classes in workshops. It should be clear to anyone who reflects even superficially on the matter that if you must provide 25 typewriters or 25 sewing machines or if you must provide a forge, the cost per pupil will be much greater than in cases where such equipment is not necessary. The question is not one of discrimination. It is one of making capital provision for the actual working of the school, for the buying of materials and equipment without which the school could not operate. An indication of priorities is the introduction of new measures. This year I am putting 600 additional teachers into national schools and 100 additional teachers ex-quota into second level schools for remedial education.
It is said that comparisions are odious but one cannot refrain from comparing the record of the Coalition with our record when Deputies have mentioned allocations in respect of grants and in respect of such items as free books and so on. I must set the record straight. The gross estimate of £510,513,000 for education this year compares with an estimate of £273,794,000 in 1976 which was the last full year of the Coalition term in office. Deputy Horgan laid great emphasis on the question of real terms but the figure for this year compared with the 1976 figure represents an increase of 11.5 per cent in real terms. The capital provided in my three years as Minister totals £149,150,000 compared with £91,580,000 in the last three years of the former administration, an increase of £57,570,000 or in real terms an increase of more than 20 per cent.
What has been the percentage increase in our school population since 1976?
As I indicated in regard to the teachers, I have taken that factor into account. With regard to the grant for free books—great play was made about this—there was no increase in 1976 or 1977. I increased the grants last year by 50 per cent. I thought Deputy Bruton in the generosity of his neighbourly heart might have mentioned that but he refrained from doing so. I agree with Deputy Tully and others when they said that the cost of books has become very high and this is a severe problem. Any fair-minded Deputy commenting on last year's increase will admit that an effort is being made in an area where no effort had been made for some time.
Is the Minister taking credit for not having reduced the amount this year?
What I am saying is that in 1976 and 1977 Deputy Bruton had some small responsibility for the fact that not one damn halfpenny was added to the amount available for free books.
Would the Minister not agree that in real terms the amount for free books was reduced?
No interruptions, please. The Minister's time is limited. We cannot have interruptions at this stage.
I have such good notes that it would be a great pity if time ran out.
It is running out rapidly.
In relation to tuition grants for secondary schools, there was no increase in 1976 or 1977, whereas they have been increased twice under the present administration, from £50 to £66.50 in 1978 and to £70 in 1979. The capitation grants were increased to cope with increased fuel expenses at the end of 1979 and that increase is being maintained in 1980. The capitation grant for national schools was £6 in 1974 and remained at that figure until I increased it first to £8 in 1978 and then to £11 in 1979. The provision for capitation grants has almost doubled from £3,320,000 in 1977 to £6,500,000 in 1980. I could go on but these comparisons will suffice to demonstrate the extent to which resources have been allocated for education by the present Government. I am making this point strongly, not for any reasons of buaileam sciath, but because Members contributing to this debate tried to indicate that in some way there was not a commitment to expenditure by the present Government.
Deputy Collins asked for an explanation for what he termed the marginal increase under Vote 30 for teacher training colleges. This is the kind of simplistic comment which, on examination, shows the Deputy did not do his research, as he should have done, because the explanation is quite simple. The subhead provides for capital as well as current expenditure. As the major extensions to the three training colleges are nearing completion, the capital requirements in 1980 are £650,000 less than they were in 1979. The substantial increase in current grants is thus concealed from view on a superficial look at the subhead in the Book of Estimates.
Deputy Horgan was concerned at the extent of the provision of £225,000 for international activities. On the other hand, Deputy Bruton was worried that the sum was not big enough.
It is being reduced from the amount provided last year.
The point is Deputy Horgan thinks it is too much and Deputy Bruton thinks it is too little——
I wanted an explanation for——
——and may the Lord look down on me in between.
I hope the Lord will afford the Minister giving an explanation.
The Lord is not providing the Minister with any more time.
The Lord does not come under the control of the Chair.
He is wasting the Lord's time.
We have a commitment to spend money on international activities, in UNESCO, the EEC, European University of Florence, College of Europe in Bruges, the International Apprentices Competition and the European Schools' Day. We have international obligations in the field of education. Which of these activities, if any, would the Deputy suggest we drop?
What did the Minister manage to drop since last year?
I happen to have my music with me. The reduction is only an apparent one.
Like all the others.
Last year we had a very successful international event in Cork. It was superb. The CEOs and committee, including a former Member of this House, who were responsible for its organisation, deserve a pat on the back. The International Apprentices Competition was beautifully organised and was a great success. We had to make provision for that. Incidentally, trust the Corkmen, they got the best possible value for money when organising this competition. That money does not recur this year, and that explains why there is an apparent drop. I hope I have explained why we must provide some money in the Book of Estimates for international activities.
Deputy Collins referred to the delay in the sanctioning of appointments in the non-university third level sector. That Deputy served the community well as a member of the governing body of the RTC in Waterford. I have arranged for a working party of representatives of A VEC and my Department to examine the situation with a view to seeing what changes, if any, are necessary for expediting the allocation and sanction of staff for the RTCs. The working party are to report by 1 July this year.
Reference was made to the higher diploma graduates of our universities. As the House knows, I have no responsibility for the intake of diploma students in the universities. The universities decide how many they will take. The rate of growth in enrolment in second level education is slowing down, and will continue to slow down in percentage terms, during the eighties. Secondary schools, for example, experienced a rapid growth of about 9 per cent in the latter half of the sixties, and the country knows why that took place—due to enlightened education policies of a former Fianna Fáil Government. This was followed by a lower growth of about 4 per cent in the early seventies, and this in turn was followed by a growth of just less than 2 per cent in the second half of the seventies. It is anticipated that this rate of growth—notice I said "rate of growth"—will fall further during the present decade to slightly over 1 per cent in the first half and to less than 1 per cent in the latter half. I want to emphasise the words "anticipated" and "rate of growth". The university authorities will, no doubt, take these trends into consideration when determining the intake into higher diploma courses.
I want to turn now to more fundamental issues which arose in the course of the debate. Deputy Collins posed the question as to whether I wished to see secondary, vocational or community schools established. Later in his speech he stated that there seemed to be a policy to run down vocational schools and that a decision had been taken favouring community schools. Deputy McMahon mentioned this problem. Deputy Horgan nailed his colours to the mast of the vocational school. I am of the opinion that confrontation has it uses in other areas but in education I do not think it serves any useful purpose at all, particularly from the students' point of view, which to my mind is the important one. Whatever about managerial authorities, whatever about people who are defending vested interest, it does not in any way help the educational process from the pupils' point of view.
There was talk in Deputy Horgan's speech about democratic accountability. There is an implication here that unless there is local democratic accountability then there is none. Surely in this democratically elected House a Minister for Education, through the Government, is accountable to the people for the development and implementation of educational policy. In fact the excellent debate we have had both today and on Friday last indicates how important is this accountability.
Deputy Horgan's preference for community colleges under the ageis of VECs rather than community schools suggests there is something undemocratic about the management of community schools.
Less democratic.
The management board of a community school comprises three elected representatives from the VEC, three religious, two elected parents and two elected teachers. The Minister for Education has overall responsibility for these schools and, I may add, their accounts are audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General. In what way is there not democratic or public accountability? For my part I see a place for all three types of school, secondary, vocational and community, generally, and in the green field area situation. I have told the religious authorities that I will consider sympathetically any application for a new secondary school. I have informed and put on record with the Irish Vocational Education Association that they will get their fair share of community colleges or vocational schools in green field areas. But equally I will see that community schools have a fair share of new schools to be erected. In all this it is essential that the wishes of the parents—Deputy McMahon referred to this and I should like to reassure him—be respected, and that they be consulted. I am sure that in their contributions Deputies did not intend to denigrate the achievements of the many community schools operating so successfully. However, I want to place on record how pleased I am with this new dimension in Irish education. Community schools are a resounding success. I want to pay tribute to the boards of management, the principals and staffs of the schools for their dedication. They have combined the academic and practical subjects and have provided an education suited to each pupil's ability and aspirations. They have apacademically successful. They have applied the concept of the community ethos fully. They have developed adult education classes for the entire community and have made available to the community the entire facilities of the school, as they were originally intended to do. They have passed the most critical test of all: they have been accepted by the parents and the community as a whole.
As I said already, Deputy Horgan seems to be either anxious for or to be recording what he sees as an imminent major row. I want to repeat that I see no fruit in a row in education circles. As far as my philosophy goes, there is room for all schools; variety improves the education scene. Let me emphasise the fact that school structures are designed for the benefit of children and not for the benefit of any vested interest; man and the Sabbath syndrome applies. As long as I am Minister for Education I will set my face against any power struggle by vested interests. I am responsible, through Dáil Éireann, for the development and implementation of educational policy. Having obtained the views of parents and educational interests, both management and teachers, I am entrusted with the responsibility of the final decision as to what type of school should be provided in any given area. I intend to fulfil that obligation objectively and with the best interests of the children of the country at heart. I would be failing in my duty as Minister and in my accountability to Dáil Éireann were I to do otherwise. In this I hope I will have the full co-operation of all the educational bodies concerned once a decision has been made. There is room for all three types of second level schools and I intend to see that each gets its fair share.
In introducing the Estimates I referred to the problem of pre-fabricated classrooms, particularly in vocational schools. I pointed out how this arose and said that the problem could not be solved overnight. I have arranged for the preparation of an overall plan for the replacement of all pre-fabricated classrooms in vocational schools where the problem is more acute than in any other sector of the educational system. A short and medium-term plan will be implemented as additional resources are made available. As a first step my Department have asked the various VECs for a full inventory of the school accommodation in each area and an indication of their priorities.
Deputy Horgan made some interesting comments in relation to equality of opportunity in our educational system. We both agree that education by itself cannot redress the imbalances in our society. We disagree as to the parameters of outside influences. Deputy Horgan confined himself to the economic policies of the Government. I may say here that a Government who have devoted themselves to the industrial development of the country, to the provision of suitable remunerated jobs for the people leaving our various educational institutions, are following a policy which impacts on education, to the benefit of education, because it gives the necessary drive and ambition to young people to equip themselves for the sophisticated jobs now becoming available in our society. I see the problem on a somewhat wider basis than Deputy Horgan; in fact education is a kind of sub-system of the system formed by society. There is a social aspect. Indeed, Deputies are aware, and in their various contributions, if not overtly at least implicitly, referred to it, there is a cultural aspect, an environmental and geographical aspect to the question and much more than domestic economic policies are involved. I make this point merely to indicate that the problem is a complex one and that the question of real equality of opportunity is not an easy one to solve. Much has been done to ensure equality of access from a quantitative point of view. The huge increase in numbers going on to complete the senior cycle in second level schools over the years and the substantial growth in numbers at third level all testify to this.
I think Deputy Tully may be a little out of date in some of his facts. He seemed to think that about 50 per cent dropped out. That is not so. I am not tying myself to the absolute accuracy of the figure but the figure is nearer 75 per cent than 50 per cent of those who participate to final level. The introduction of free education, the raising of the school leaving age to 15 years, the growth in the number of five year olds enrolling in schools, the higher education grants system and the many other reforms have all played their part in ensuring access from a quantitative aspect. However, effective equality must be sought not only through quantitative measures but also through qualitative measures. Again that point was made by a Deputy in the course of the debate. Implicit in this is the relevance of education and its ability to motivate the child and sustain his or her interest. This calls for further measures, in particular, the equalisation of esteem in the public mind for the various types of education referred to, obliquely at least, by Deputy Vivion de Valera; academic and technical for the purpose, for example, of subsequent access to the university; the emphasis on the necessity for all to acquire a common core of knowledge. Here I would say that the point being made about imparting skills to young people does not go deeply enough. The real educational problem to my mind, is to decide on an education which will be creative and will leave the subject as adaptable as possible later on.
We must bend our minds to providing this type of education which stimulates creativity in the mind and which improves the adaptability of the mind of the pupil. The point has been made several times during the debate that skills become obsolete very quickly. Then retraining has to take place. There is no point in providing the means for retraining if the field is not fertile enough to accept the new crop. It must be our objective and aim to have the field in a degree of fertility that it will take the new crop—that the pupil, now grown to manhood, will be able to adapt and retrain. The imparting of specific skills, or the improving of the machinery for imparting specific skills, is not enough. We must also take into account the creation of new possibilities in adult education, the establishment of closer links between formal and non-formal education, with a view gradually to instituting lifelong education. As I have said, it is a complex subject and there is no readymade solution. What is important is that we have our objectives and travel in the right direction.
A number of Deputies referred to the need for curricular reforms. Of course, there must be a rolling reform of curricula. A major task of the curriculum unit in my Department is to conduct a review of the general suitability—and this is the same theme again—of curricula and to examine the curricular problems which have emerged in recent years. There is the problem of the lack of continuity between the child-centred curriculum, often referred to, at primary level and the subject-centred curriculum at second level and the effect of the competition for entry to certain faculties in universities upon the curriculum of second level schools. There is also the problem of maintenance of standards, including standards of literacy and numeracy, and the rising standards of academic attainment for entry to third level institutions. Curricular problems are not amenable to simplistic solutions. Much care and research is needed and evaluation of changes must always be undertaken. I can assure the House that these issues are under constant examination by the professional staff in the curriculum unit.
Certain criticisms have been voiced in relation to the fact that differences regarding the structure of boards of management of national schools have not been resolved. The position is that there are fundamental differences in principle between the teacher and managerial interests which would have to be resolved before the existing structure of the management boards can be altered. Officials of my Department and I, myself, have, through joint and separate discussions with the parties concerned, endeavoured to seek ways and means by which the present differences could be resolved. I shall continue to strive for a resolution of the present difficulties.
Mention has been made, in the course of the debate, of the use of corporal punishment in our schools. The maintenance of school discipline is a matter, in the first instance, for the management authorities of each school and particular schools may and do adopt particular policies in the matter. As I have previously pointed out, the sanction for the use of corporal punishment in schools does not arise from departmental regulations. It proceeds from the legal relationship between pupil and teacher, which is that the teacher stands in loco parentis and therefore may use such means of discipline and correction as might by used by a wise and prudent parent.
We are talking about a system and a society where corporal punishment is being gradually phased out. This reflects developing attitudes of communities and of parents in the treatment of their children, and in the context of education, it reflects an increased professionalism among teachers, as well as increasing co-operation between parents and teachers. The new curriculum in primary schools, with its in-built motivation for discovery and learning and with its boundless opportunities for creativity and self-expression, ensures the voluntary co-operation of the pupils. Children with educational difficulties and problems are now no longer seen as recalcitrant and unco-operative, but rather as individuals who need extra care and attention, who may need the extra services provided by remedial teachers and school psychologists to make school life more satisfying for them.
Teachers nowadays are better trained in understanding the psychology of the young people under their care and have available to them a range of methodologies and content which can cater for the vast majority of teaching situations. In the use of their professional skills they seek to influence their pupils by forming better relationships with them—and indeed Deputy Browne referred to this—based on mutual affection and respect, thus rendering corporal punishment in any but the most exceptional cases unnecessary. The proof of these trends lies essentially in the fact that the mechanism for bringing breaches of school regulations in respect of punishment to the notice of the Department is very infrequently invoked and cases of serious breach of these regulations are minimal. I have available to me the varied views of many organisations having a particular interest in school discipline—and "school discipline" are the words I am using deliberately. I await some further observations. I shall meet the various organisations in the very near future to deal with this matter further.
I share the Deputy's concern for the early identification of children with difficulties in basic language and number learning. One Deputy referred to the case of a moderately mentally handicapped child who had not been identified as such until he was 12 years old. Now, I am accepting the Deputy's statement as a fact, but I find it simply incomprehensible. If he were mildly handicapped I could see that this might happen, but moderately mentally handicapped is a different category. I just cannot understand how this could happen at all, as of now.
I am not absolutely certain if he was 12 or 11 years old, but certainly he was moderately mentally handicapped.
I, myself, have come across cases where the parents were very reluctant to admit any such thing. In such cases, it is sometimes very difficult to convince them. Even professional people cannot convince them of the fact.
I am sorry but I must shoot the Minister down.
The Chair is the only man who has been able to do that today.
Again, I appreciate very much the contributions from the Deputies. I regret very much that I still have a volume of comment on the individual contributions of the Deputies and replies to various questions posed to me during the course of the debate. I am inclined to agree with the people who say that we did not get enough time for debating this Estimate but I am not challenging a decision of the House and I am not challenging the arrangements reached between the Whips.
Could the Minister write to us?
I am putting a load on somebody at this moment and feel a bit guilty, but I shall undertake to correspond with the Deputies.
Vote put and agreed to.