I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for allowing me raise this issue. The incident in Waterford raises some fundamental questions about rights and duties in our education system. It has taken the lid off problems which have been simmering below the surface for some considerable time.
I believe the primary duty of the State is to protect the safety of its people, and this is as true in the classroom as anywhere else. The assault of teachers must be treated as a crime and not something to be excused or tolerated. There can be no room for public ambivalence on this question. The teacher is in loco parentis and cannot have his or her authority challenged by physical abuse. Similarly, sexual harassment, which many of the teachers' unions say is becoming a problem, must be taken very seriously.
The school in this instance is to be complimented on the procedures it has followed. However, a serious anomaly has been exposed. The teachers have concluded they can no longer provide schooling to the pupil at the centre of this incident. However, the Minister insists the school cannot expel the pupil unless and until it finds another school willing to take him. It is unacceptable the Minister allows such a stand-off. He cannot wash his hands of responsibilities in this area. The State exercises its authority to compel school attendance and it must be willing to provide suitable accommodation and not to seek to shunt responsibility onto a school which cannot cope in such an instance.
Parents and pupils also have fundamental rights which must be respected. We are in the process of enshrining new rights for parents and students to appeal the exercise of authority by a teacher or a school. The Minister must go further in this area. An education Ombudsman must be appointed. Parents must be embraced as an equal partner. Coherent policies governing behaviour and suspensions which parents can see are applied consistently are needed in schools. All rights carry reciprocal duties and a serious issue which arises in this case is whether compulsory attendance should extend to parents to attend child case conferences, or to pupils to attend psychological assessments. I believe there should be such compulsion on pupils and parents in respect of the education of their children, which is itself compulsory.
The Minister and his Department have been far too quick to act as Pontius Pilate in the issue of school discipline. The Department has guidelines which it issues to schools, but this is a matter of resourcing schools to cope. Disruptive children cannot be dealt with unless a resourced alternative exists to cater for them. Children are not being cared for in the right way. Schools do not have available to them the alternative treatments needed for particularly disruptive children.
The Minister has had for well over a year a path breaking report on school discipline. It put forward a serious and logical proposal: the establishment of a support team to which a teacher or a school could refer, at a timely stage, a child with discipline problems. No such support team is available to schools at present. Such a team should involve psychologists and counsellors as well as education specialists and community gardaí. Not only was this recommended one year ago in the report on school discipline, the same recommendation resurfaced when the Clondalkin study on school attendance arose.
The system of education, welfare and school attendance is a shambles. No coherent records are kept of school attendance; they have fallen into disuse. School attendance officers, or education welfare officers as they are known in modern parlance, are only in a handful of areas. No consistent policies are set out in this area. Suspensions are not consistently reported to anyone and problem children are left to be catered for by the school, predominantly acting alone. This is a huge gap which must be filled. It is impossible to expect teachers, who sometimes must teach up to 40 pupils in a primary classroom, to deal with extremely disruptive children.
It is high time this issue was addressed and that the curriculum was examined to see if it is properly equipped to cater for children who have difficulties responding to the traditional curriculum and school environment. It is gone beyond the stage now where the old type curriculum is used for all pupils regardless. Curricula should be more flexible and project based to encourage particularly disruptive young people who get frustrated in the existing system to develop their talents. Teachers must be supported in the classroom with proper resources. I hope the Minister will now commit those resources and devise structures to involve those in the health and justice services in such a support team for schools.
