——where not alone do people not benefit from the curriculum but they left school today embittered and thwarted and bewildered and more set back socially and in terms of morale than when they entered. We have a collective responsibility to do something about this. If it means devising new and imaginative courses, then let us run to it. If it means having a nail driving competition because that is all somebody is able to do then, in the name of heaven, let us have nail driving competitions because these children are constitutionally entitled to get educational fulfilment from the curriculum which we provide. It is time we left aside our divisions and our differences in this regard and, once and for all, cherished all our children equally.
One of the greatest indictments of our educational system has been our failure to do anything in relation to the examination structure. How wrong it is that after spending eight years in primary school and another five years in post-primary school a 20 hour examination is the final arbiter of whether somebody has achieved a level of educational competence. Surely it is wrong that ten days in June should decide the road a person will go and whether or not he will be classified as an educational reject for the rest of his life. If ever there was an area crying out for fundamental change it is this area of the examinations structure because it takes no cognisance of personality development, character development or any of the other facets of a person's persona that may perchance develop over the period of a person's educational career.
It is, therefore, quite obvious that what we are talking about is not a minor rejigging of the educational structure. We are not talking about minor tinkering with what is there already. What we are talking about is major restructuring, and what we need, if we are going to carry this out, is much courage, independence, foresight, expertise and vision. What we need is not an advisory council which is there simply and solely to advise and report, as the Minister has said, directly to the Minister herself. What we need is a body which is independent and perceives itself to be so, has a statutory foundation and statutory powers and knows that it cannot at any stage be clobbered by the heavy hand of the Minister. We do not need a body created in order to provide a sop to people on the pretext that major revision is on the way.
I am very much afraid that the pique which quite obviously developed in relation to the Minister and the antipathy that the Minister seems to have towards her predecessor has spilled over into this area and has allowed her an uncharacteristic display of what I regard as smallmindedness in this all important but unfortunate area. I appeal now to the Minister to have a rethink in this regard. By doing this, she will win the regard and admiration of people rather than their disfavour and that of her colleagues on the Fianna Fáil backbenches. She and I know the words of the nursery rhyme: "Mary had a little lamb". One thing that we do not want to happen in relation to this all-important area is that everywhere that Mary wants to go, the lamb would be sure to go. The body must be given its independence, its teeth, its statutory function, thus providing a mature attitude in relation to this matter.
I was amused by Deputy Roche's defence of the line that the body should not be independent. I think he used the word "Frankenstein". It was another example of Fianna Fáil licence and exaggeration. That word was also used by Deputy Woods at another stage when he referred to a "Frankenstein stalking the land". He said we have created many semi-State bodies which have grown up to be monsters. The mention of An Bord Pleanála was an unfortunate choice because I believe that was the creation of the Minister's own party. He did not mention the marvellous work done, on the basis of their independence, by the successful ones, such as Bord na Móna, the ESB, Aer Lingus. Bord Fáilte, to mention but a few.
Again, I noticed the rather puerile comments of Deputy Wright in relation to his defence of the Minister's stand and that of his party in relation to education, when his only criticism was — a prime example of nit-picking — that the terminology used in the Bill was all in the masculine. Those are weak arguments. I do not think any strong argument has come from the other side of the House. If the personnel, the functions and the purpose are the same, why change the concept, the idea, the thrust and the whole status of this body in the first place? The body should be independent and there is enough goodwill and work out there to gel the whole lot together into a really dynamic movement which will change the whole face of education at this point. If the Minister backs down she will be seen as and written into the history books as somebody who took a courageous stand for the benefit of the children, the educationists, the whole education system and future generations of our people.
What we are talking about now is creating an educational system which will lead Ireland into the nineties and into the 21st century. I want to laud, in particular, the magnificent work done by voluntary bodies. I am talking about the combination of Dublin VEC and the Trinity College experiment, about the Humanities and ISCIP movement. I am talking about the North Mayo Curriculum and Development Board and about the work done by the Intermediate History Body, which is a joint movement where people give voluntarily of their time, efforts and energy and are not paid, a joint movement of teachers and inspectors.
When it came to making choices about who went and who stayed — and this happened with agriculture — it was the people on the ground, the people in ACOT and An Foras Talúntais who went, the practitioners in the field. They were the ones who were expected to accept redundancies, cuts and staff diminution. Again, in education who are the people who are expected to bear the brunt? It is the teachers, the hands-on people, the people in the field who know the problems and are wrestling with them and will continue to wrestle with them more helplessly if the Minister goes ahead with increasing the pupil-teacher ratio. If the Minister looks within the ambit of her Department, she will find there are areas that could be pruned, that there are civil servants who could go. I am sure there are bureaucrats who could be dispensed with. Let her leave the practitioners, the teachers, in place.
Furthermore, there is a whole layer of duplication and triplication in relation to management. I am thinking in particular of the illusion that is created that a local management board is a management board, that it has autonomous powers, real powers and teeth. That is not the situation. Every single management board and vocational education committee, by and large, must look for ministerial or departmental approval before they do anything of significance. It is high time we devolved powers to these bodies. These are responsible people taken from the various segments and elements and with the key component of the interest of the particular scheme being managed at heart. They have expertise and are responsible. If there was greater devolution of power through the schools, the school management and the vocational education committees, the Minister could safely shed a couple of hundred civil servants in her own Department without any fundamental loss to the efficiency thereof.
The statement allegedly made by the Minister and reported on the back page of one of the Sunday papers that she is not for turning in this matter should be reconsidered. She may very well be for turning when this vote is taken tonight. This is the first signal of a collective show of determination by the Opposition parties that in certain areas, at certain stages, and in relation to certain issues the attitude is, thus far and no further. We have a duty to ensure that our educational standards are maintained and that the momentum of the changes that were underway under the previous Administration is not in any way diminished but gains greater momentum and is carried to its logical conclusion.
I can think of other areas where the Minister, without any cost, could bring about certain changes of attitude which would be for the betterment of the education system and for all of us in the long run. For example, it is unfortunate that nowadays, if a student does the intermediate certificate and passes on to what is normally fourth year in a secondary, comprehensive or community school, and discovers that he or she has made the wrong subject choices because the intermediate certificate results came out a month later than they should have or than the previous year, or if for some reason it is decided by the student or the student's parents that he or she is not of a sufficiently high level of maturity to make a decision in relation to choice of career, or if on the educational advice of the teachers there is a general collective decision that the wise thing to be done in that case is that the student should repeat fourth year, there is no mechanism, no modus operandi for that child to repeat fourth year. How far removed from the vision, idealism and aim that every school would have the luxury of a transition year in the not too distant future. I am sad the Minister has not relented in relation to her decision. It would show a singlemindedness, open-mindedness and receptiveness to logic. We have a collective determination on this matter and I am glad to hear that Deputy De Rossa will back this Bill.
