Vol. 404 No. 9
6 Mr. J. Higgins asked the Minister for Education if, in view of the substantial capital expenditure involved, she is prepared to encourage greater utilisation of school facilities for second chance education and community activities; and if she will make a statement on the matter.
I favour the use of school facilities for such activities to the greatest extent possible. I would encourage school management authorities to make their premises available for the purposes referred to by the Deputy and I believe that, to an increasing extent, they do so.
In the context of new initiatives under the Programme for Economic and Social Progress, related to adult and community programmes, my Department are currently examining the question of what arrangements should be made to ensure availability to the community of school premises where the State has made a significant capital investment in the building.
Irrespective of what exhortation the Minister has given to the school authorities, I am afraid she is ill-informed. I ask the Minister to acknowledge that we have 250 vocational schools, 65 community-comprehensive schools and 495 secondary schools, many of which have woodwork rooms, metalwork rooms, kitchens, computer facilities, science rooms and so on most of which lie dormant and unused from 4 o'clock each evening and for four and a half months each year. We have a huge multi-billion pound resource which could be used for numerous courses to enhance the general standard of education of people who never had a chance of such education in the first place and could be provided with second chance education now.
I could not agree more. In the past two or three years we have made great strides in opening up such facilities. Whenever I go to a school for an official opening or some other reason I always say that the school should be a community resource available to the people. There are questions of insurance, one of the major issues which besets groups who wish to use schools for some purpose. Naturally school authorities, management and those in charge, are often rightly dubious about the cost to them were there not proper insurance in the event of an incident of some kind. We have made it clear — and boards of management are taking it on board — that it would be up to the groups using the school as a resource to come to some arrangement with the school authorities. I fully agree with the Deputy. Huge amounts of public money have gone into these resources, which have many valuable aspects such as the practical rooms of which the Deputy spoke and other rooms which could simply be used for meetings. They should be available as community resources, not regarded as places where the key is turned in the lock at 4 o'clock in the evening. I will endeavour to give more explicit instructions to school authorities in that regard.
In addition to giving explicit instructions, will the Minister also advise school authorities that they might usefully liaise with agencies such as FÁS to provide crash courses for people who have to emigrate to give them basic skills in metalwork, woodwork and so on in view of the fact that the facilities are there? Will the Minister restructure the management of schools to enable, for example, second vice principals to be appointed with responsibility for the proper management and supervision of evening and night classes? That system operated in vocational schools at one stage.
I am certainly of the opinion that the type of course which the Deputy envisages should be in educational institutions which have full professional standards. I seek on all occasions to try to achieve this. Regarding the appointment of a second vice principal, that is another question altogether.
