I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
I regard it as a singular honour to bring this Education Bill before the House this evening. This is a first in many respects not least of which is the fact that this is, to my knowledge, the first Bill entitled an Education Bill to be brought before Dáil Éireann. Indeed, the other measure bearing that title was the very worthwhile, radical and comprehensive Education (Ireland) Bill, 1919 which was introduced in the House of Commons. That Bill proved so controversial at the time that after its Second Reading it was abandoned; abandoned perhaps but certainly not forgotten. Neither has its lesson been lost on subsequent Ministers for Education. Since the 1919 experience even the most adventurous of Ministers has shied away from any attempt whatsoever to introduce a subsequent Education Bill.
I am particularly happy to introduce this Bill this evening because it is incumbent upon us, as we face into the 21st Century which is less than a mere nine years down the road, once and for all, to place our education system on a sound legislative framework enshrining what has developed in such a piecemeal and ad hoc fashion up to now while, at the same time, leaving the legislative scaffolding flexible enough to enable desired and necessary changes to occur for the foreseeable future.
One of the remarkable features of Irish education at both primary and second level has been its marked absence of any legislative base. It is generally accepted that our present primary school system is founded on a letter sent by Chief Secretary, Lord Stanley to the Duke of Leinster in in October 1831. Apart from the Ministers and Secretaries Act, 1924 the only other legislation enacted in the sphere of primary education is the School Attendance Act, 1926 and subsequent amendments. Secondary education for its part derives mainly from the modest financing proposals in the Intermediate Education (Ireland) Act, 1878. The Agricultural and Technical Instruction Act, 1879 was the precursor of the 1930 Vocational Education Act, 1930. The Vocational education system, therefore, is the only system of education which has a contemporary and solid legislative foundation.
Changes, great and small, have been wrought over the years by ministerial directives and by hundreds and indeed thousands of circular letters. The introduction of free education with its welcome and far-reaching consequences, comprehensive schools, community schools, the replacement of the Intermediate Certificate with the Junior Certificate, the primary education review — everything that has happened, great and small — happened by way of ministerial diktat not alone without any legislation but without any of these momentous happenings reported to the Dáil in order to enable the elected Members to make recommendations, debate them or provide criticisms.
It is truly remarkable that the central instrument of social policy, the greater moulder of society, the education system, managed by a Department who have a budget of £1.3 billion should have absolutely no reporting process, no obligation and no accountability to the Dáil other than the inadequate and truncated Estimates debates. I want, therefore, to pay particular tribute to Deputy John Bruton for his analysis in 1990 showing that there was a glaring deficiency in education which must and should be addressed by an education Bill. More than any other Member of this House, Deputy Bruton has been an outstanding pioneer of reform. His Dáil reform proposals are recognised by commentators and people outside this House as far-reaching, practical and long overdue. They have slowly gained grudging recognition by the parties in Government, Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, as an urgent imperative if we are to restore respect and credibility to the Houses of Parliament.
The introduction of television to this Chamber was the result of another Bruton crusade a few years ago which culminated in the adoption of a motion by the Dáil and the establishment of an all-party committee thereby making the televising of this House's proceedings, and indeed of the other House, a reality. I am delighted, therefore, that the Minister for Education's initial reluctance to accept the need to have an education Act was quickly laid aside and that she is now to publish in due course her own education Bill through the mechanism of a Green Paper and a White Paper.
In the absence of a clear statutory base the role and functions of the Minister for Education have been based on assumptions rather than on any clear definitions. Indeed, the authority of the Minister has no statutory base and the status and enforceability of all directives and circular letters issued by the Minister derive in effect from the fact that the Minister holds the purse strings. If one fails to comply, then one does not get the necessary finance to function. I have set out therefore, in this Bill to establish a comprehensive list of what I see as the statutory role, functions, duties and obligations of the Minister for Education. Section 4 of the Bill makes the Minister responsible for the provision of primary and post primary education to all persons of school age and for the supervision and implementation of education policy.
I have already remarked on the virtual absence, indeed non-existence, of legislation on education. The last number of weeks has been a super-charged debate on the need for accountability at all levels in public life culminating in last week's debate in the Dáil. Education has always been a subject capable of exciting intense debate but it has become particularly so in later years because of the higher participation rate, structural changes, moves towards rationalisation, curriculum innovations, the ever increasing education competition and greater involvement of parents.
Responding to the need the print media have contributed by providing specialist correspondents well briefed, sharp, critical and constructive, providing thoroughly educative features and supplements to feed the growing national appetite. How ludicrous, therefore, that we have had absolutely no education debate in this House. I do not think anybody can seriously contend that the monthly Education Question Time lottery is a debate or indeed that the guillotined half hour to one hour Estimates debate give ample scope to do other than a cursory examination of the various elements of the Estimate.
The requirement in section 4 (c) of the Bill, that the Minister must bring before the Dáil each year a full and comprehensive report on all aspects of education within six months of the conclusion of the school year is one of the most significant features of the Bill. This annual report would include an evaluation of the Department's activities during the previous year, a statement on their success or otherwise in achieving their education objectives and the implementation of education policy. Again dealing with the different elements of the annual report to the Dáil, section 4 (c) (iii) builds in a statement on the unit costs in the different types of school. It is important that we have this regular appraisal of the essential running costs of the different types, sizes and categories of schools. It is particularly important at a time when capitation grants have fallen seriously into arrears and when parents of children at primary level have to dig deep into their own pockets to pay for heating, cleaning, school equipment and other essential features of education. It is the absence of this annual unit cost statement that has led to the situation where free education and the free education scheme is being increasingly undermined and eroded by such daily impositions on parents. It is also important that the unit cost studies would pinpoint the need to grant aid at the appropriate higher rates those schools which have a higher technical content in their curricula as apart from schools where there is an almost total academic bias.
There is a quiet sense of satisfaction in the Irish education circle that Irish education standards are high. The recent OECD report on education in Ireland, however, emphasises the increasing importance of education and training for the vitality of the economy, employment and the entire process of national development in an era of rapid social and cultural change. The annual report to the Dáil, therefore, would contain comparisons with other European countries both in terms of a comparative evaluation of the schools system vis-à-vis schools in our European counterpart countries as well as comparisons, where possible, in relation to the standards and education objectives in equivalent examinations in those countries.
We are on the brink of 1992 with all its implications for Community cohesion and greater European integration. It is extraordinary that while major developments have taken place and continue to take place in the social and economic sphere there has been very little interaction between the education systems in the different member states. Of course there is contact between the Ministers at ministerial level — I acknowledge that. I also acknowledge that we have programmes such as the ERASMUS programme at third level.
Ireland should be the leading proponent of greater integration. By letting up the blinds on our education system, by offering ourselves and our education product to the outside examiners, we would be making a first significant step to much greater and badly needed education co-operation and partnership. These are the core areas of the annual report to come before the Dáil; many other areas will, inevitably, be reported on and the Bill allows for this. However, the really important thing is that we have an annual report, that we thereby have full accountability, that we have an annual update on where we are educationally, how effectively the system is delivering the service, and where we hope to go in the coming year and years ahead. It goes without saying that it is absolutely necessary that this report is debated in full in the Dáil, thereby bringing the accountability process to its logical conclusion.
Section 5 of the Bill is essentially a series of enabling provisions defining areas where the Minister is empowered to make regulations concerning minimum standards to be attained in each school, also providing for the maintenance of funding for schools, recognition — and the withdrawal of recognition — of schools, the terms of employment of teachers and other non-teaching school personnel, the length of the school day, school terms and school year and regulating the rights of school boards and management in principle to grant additional holidays in certain circumstances. It is important that as much discretion as possible is given to local management in this area and, indeed, as many other areas as possible.
One of the glaring deficiencies in our education system is the virtual non-existence of a proper scheme of in-service courses and retraining for teachers. There seems to be an assumption that a teacher who emerges from a teacher training college after three years or obtains his or her higher diploma in education is like the camel, equipped for life with his or her pedagogical hump, fully competent to deal with the changing classroom demands for the next 40 years of his or her teaching journey through life. Of course one must recognise the efforts of the Department of Education to get in-service courses under way, but these efforts are hopelessly under-funded, totally inadequate and very unstructured in the face of the massive need to retrain teachers in coping with the various educational demands. I am talking about the curriculum changes, curriculum designs, changing methodologies and pupil assessment.
The Minister for Education, therefore, has a clear obligation to set up a comprehensive scheme of in-service and retraining courses for teachers so that every teacher in every school in every part of the country can have regular access to such courses in his or her area, thereby recharging, on a regular basis, their educational batteries. Many of the frustrations of teachers, much of the feeling of being unable to cope and a lot of the clamour of teachers about increasing pressure and tension, would be greatly eased if a permanent scheme of retraining and in-service courses were in place.
The OECD Observer referred to the Irish teaching body as a competent but greying profession which is in danger of suffering from hardening of the arteries unless proper in-service training is put in place immediately. The OECD Observer said: “Ireland has a human capability to build up an outstanding in-service education. The main difficulty is the lack of appropriate structures and resources.” Section 5 (g), therefore, is the enabling provision which the Minister will use to the full to fill a major educational vacuum. Notwithstanding the introduction of the finest in-service and retraining in the world, there is an obvious need to allow voluntarily out of the system teachers who feel they simply cannot benefit from such courses and who want to go. There should be an ongoing early retirement provision to facilitate this and to rejuvenate the profession from the huge pool of young, able and highly motivated teachers who are in such ready supply.
Education has come to be increasingly couched in terms such as partnership and co-operation. Yet if we examine the vast majority of catchment areas in the country we will see that not alone is there no partnership or co-operation, there is, in fact, intense rivalry and competition. Acknowledging the merits of competition, one nevertheless has to question why the various primary schools in a catchment area remain totally detached and insular with absolutely no contact among themselves and absolutely no contact in most cases with the second level system into which they pass their charges after sixth class. Equally, or perhaps more so, we should look at the situation in small provincial towns where you have the classic case of two secondary schools and a vocational school all enjoying parallel but separate independent existences with absolutely no contact with each other on an informal let alone formal basis. Indeed, in many situations these schools are very often locked in mortal combat for the scarce pupil numbers in the catchment area. Generally they provide the same range of subjects to children from similar backgrounds who at the end of schooling will sit the very same examinations. You have wholesale duplication and triplication while often schools individually are too small to enable adequate streaming according to ability range.
Section 5 (h) of the Bill allows for the recognition and provision of support for local education co-operation councils, as the Bill states "to facilitate local co-operation between schools, both primary and post-primary, and the sharing of improved allocation of resources available to all schools in particular areas". I believe that such local education co-operative councils will provide a forum for dialogue where the management boards of all the different schools in an area come together and in the common interest of all their pupils openly discuss their common problems and experiences, where they can examine the possibility of pooling their resources and arrive at common solutions to their problems, where they can evaluate the need and effectiveness of the home school liaison programmes, where they can co-ordinate student exchange with other countries, where they can devise ways of giving more educational vitality to the very expensive school buildings and equipment and resources which in most cases remain locked up and unused for 16 hours a day five days a week for entire weekends and for four months of the year, where again the schools can arrive at common youth programmes for the young people in the area and also put in place a proper structure for adult education. The areas of common interest and of common benefit are innumerable. However, one of its main priorities should be for everybody in the local education co-operative council to sit down together and look down the road to the future and devise a proper development strategy for education at all levels in its area.
The population projections at primary level are alarming. They indicate that pupil enrolment will drop from the current figure of 534,400 to 427,700, a drop of over 100,000 within ten years. There is a clear early warning system here for the post-primary sector. It is glaringly obvious that reduced numbers in school means increased competition for students leading almost to an education civil war at second level where survival will be the name of the game. It is patently obvious, therefore, that there must be rationalisation. Far better that such rationalisation should be the result of a process of mutual interaction and dialogue through the local education co-operative councils than by way of subsequent shotgun marriages. I had the very fortunate experience of being involved in a second level school which moved from a situation of intense competition through a period of educational courtship with the other schools in the catchment area leading to an eventual very happy educational marriage in the shape of a community school.
I am not, however, advocating regionalisation or new regional structures. I believe that we are simply too small in terms of population to set up new educational regions. However few they might be, each new regional authority would require their own separate bureaucracy. The history of regionalisation in this country has not been a happy one.
One need look not further than the health boards — eight grossly overweight bureaucracies with their eight chief executive officers presiding over a hierarchy of programme managers, staff officers, assistant staff officers, superintendent community welfare officers, community welfare officers, clerical officers, assistant clerical officers and clerk typists. Huge resources are dissipated in administration while the actual services themselves are starved for cash. I see no reason why we should repeat the mistake in education. In my opinion the local education co-operative councils' proposed in this Bill would provide an easy local vehicle for the delivery of a better education service at minimal cost at local level, which is ultimately what we are setting out to achieve.
I want to place particular emphasis on section 5 (f) of the Bill. I believe that if you are to achieve education equality then you must discriminate favourably in terms of extra resource input to compensate for disadvantage; you have got to allow for weighted distribution of resources according to need. On the one hand, we are proud of the fact that the products of our education system can hold their heads high on any international education stage. This, however, ignores the fact that 10 to 15 per cent of the pupils at primary level do not derive benefit from primary education but actually leave school more demotivated and soul destroyed than when they crossed the school threshold in the morning. It is a scandal that with such a high proportion of school children unable to cope with the day-to-day happenings in the classroom remedial teaching is such a low priority that two-thirds of schools have absolutely no access whatever to remedial teachers.
Again, you cannot equate in terms of targeting of resources slow learners with a class of high achievers or children from huge ghetto-like low education interest areas, or indeed the children of travellers who are gaining exposure to education for the first time, with highly motivated youngsters from areas with a long history of involvement in education at all levels. There has to be an acknowledgement of such social or intellectually disabling factors and special resources in the form of special pupil-teacher ratio, additional grants etc must be made available.
Again, research at post-primary level reveals that the curriculum is failing 25 per cent of the students and this certainly is not to assume that the other 75 per cent are being well served either. We aspire to but we certainly do not serve all the children of the nation equally. Equality of education provision is not the same as equality of education opportunity. As things stand, our education system simply fails to dispenses the educational resources of the nation equally and equitably as the Constitution requires. Emile Durkheim observed "Education transformations are always the result and symptom of the social transformations in terms of which they are explained". This Bill, therefore, attempts to end once and for all the wasteful squandermania of so many talented pupils' abilities, to put an end once and for all to a situation where so many of our students come off the education conveyor belt and onto the education scrap-heap. We are attempting to put in place an education framework which will give full scope to the expression of the potential, the talents, abilities and skills of all the children of the nation.
The Bill also envisages a new relationship between the school and the social services outside. Social Workers, community welfare officers and community careworkers have considerable insight into particular domestic circumstances which could prove vital in the child's school performance. Again, teachers can often observe and detect in children in class some telltale symptoms of circumstances that need further examination at home. Yet, apart, from the early tentative start in home school liaison, there is absolutely no dialogue or exchange between schools and the social services.
In section 5 (w) I am proposing a greater usage of travelling teachers. How often have we seen vibrant small schools go to the wall because a drop in pupil numbers led to a loss of a teacher, which in effect meant the loss of a subject? Drop French from the curriculum and students cannot go to university. Drop woodwork, as almost happened in Tuam last week, and you have lost your technical status.
