On the last occasion on which this motion was discussed, I suggested to the Seanad that even though we lacked certain information which will be available when reports on investment in education are published, nevertheless it was useful that we should have a debate that would concentrate on general principles rather than on the statistical position in regard to post-primary education. I suggested there were three main objectives in education, namely, the development of the individual, the handing on of a certain culture and the training of the future work force. Although on first appearance, these objectives might seem contradictory and at times perhaps antagonistic, a closer and more thorough examination reveals that these three separate objectives could be harmonised. Indeed, it is now becoming evident that, properly handled, these three objectives cannot only be harmonised but can be used to reinforce one another. It is this harmony and this interaction that should be the main purpose of educational policy and educational planning.
If we approach this question of devising a policy and a plan for education, we become immediately struck by the fact that a policy for post-primary education is in itself a relatively new thing, and to plan deliberately for post-primary education is certainly a new thing. While today we discuss the question of post-primary education for all and the quickest way in which we can achieve it and while we are naturally impatient with the fact that we are not progressing more quickly towards it, it is well to remember that we have in regard to secondary education come quite some distance in the past 25 years, and certainly some distance in the past 50 years. If we look back to the position in the 19th century, we are struck immediately by the narrowness of the education of that time. This struck me particularly strongly some years ago when, in the course of some research on the history of engineering in Ireland in the 19th century, I was examining the private papers of a very eminent engineer in this country, a very prominent man whose fame went all around the world. Among the private papers was a list of the various expenses he incurred from year to year and I remember being particularly struck by the amount of money he spent on the education of his children. He spent a very large amount of money on the education of his eldest son, a small amount of money on the education of his other sons, a very small amount indeed, and practically nothing at all on the education of his daughter.
When we come to look at the whole debate about education today, we realise how education has suddenly blossomed into a universal thing and it is not only that the working classes are now able in some respects to get post-primary education but that not 50 years ago, actually in the middle and professional classes, secondary education was by no means a universal thing. There is no doubt that the most striking development throughout the world in post-primary education has been the making of that education available to persons absolutely irrespective of the financial circumstances of their homes. Indeed, in education, it can be truly said in the words of a now forgotten American politician that this is the century of the common man. Now we are faced with this problem of universal post-primary education and how we can achieve it. We must realise here that we have come a long way and certainly have a fair way to go, but we should also realise that this will probably be a never ending problem.
It was well said some years ago by Anthony Crossland who has become Minister for Education in England that when we had solved the problem of equality of education in education, we would have to solve it all over again. He went on to distinguish the weak equality of opportunity and the strong equality of opportunity in education and in making this distinction, he drew up a very vital point. He said that the first stage in equality of education is when we get to the stage—and it is the stage which we are facing now in Ireland—when we see that every child capable of benefiting from education and who can be judged to be capable of benefiting, can receive education up to the limit of his capacity. This of course was the basis developed in England in post-war times whereby children were separated into different streams and educated to the best of their capacity.
But Mr. Crossland went on to say that this was only a half-way stage, and if we look at education and at what can be done and is being done, we can see another target ahead, the target which he called the target of the strong equality of opportunity. This he said was a situation in which not only children who showed themselves in early life to be capable of being educated to a high standard were educated but that children would be trained in such a way as to overcome the deficiencies which were apparent in them at this stage. This is something which is becoming more and more acceptable in educational circumstances, that every child is capable of post-primary education for quite a long period, and that no amount of sifting it and no amount of settling in the streams will solve this particular problem.
As I said when I was speaking the last day, this is not something utopian, not something that can be laid aside. Modern technology, which makes universal education possible, by its effect on economic growth, also requires universal education. Unless we take the plunge in this direction and move positively in the direction of universal education, we will never be able to afford to do the thing. It is like the situation in which I suppose many of us found ourselves when we were trying to decide whether we had enough money to get married. The situation is if you wait till you have enough money to get married in comfort, you will never get married at all.
That is true of education in this country. If we wait for economic development when money will be available without effort, and without squeezing something else for education, the position is we may be waiting forever. The day may never come when economic growth will keep up the pace of acceleration unless we first of all start to invest in universal education.
That is not a matter of taking some people to the top. It is a matter of training every person in the community to be better than he would be if we had not made such an intensive drive in regard to education.
If we are to adopt this objective of the spread of universal education in our country, certain consequences inevitably follow. I for one am convinced if we are to have universal education of the type we need to support the economic progress of the country, this will only be possible if the State intervenes. I think, further, if the State is to intervene in education, it should not intervene in a haphazard manner, but in accordance with a certain plan. It need not be rigid and, indeed, if it is to succeed, it should be a flexible plan. If the State is to plan in regard to education, it should plan only on the basis of adequate surveys and adequate projections as to what will happen in the future.
A start has been made in regard to the project of investment in education, but I want to emphasise here that if the State is to play a vital role in the promotion of universal education, then surveys of this type must be continuous. It is absolutely no use having a project which lasts for two years, a report which is discussed and left at that. Unless the work of surveying and planning is absolutely continuous, the educational plan will falter and the fruits we look to it for will not be available.
It is of course really pointless to discuss further as to how these surveys should be done until we see the results of the preliminary survey on investment in education. The likelihood is that the main value of such a report will be to indicate, not the solution of a problem, but how the solution can be found. In the problem then facing us in drawing up any plan for education, there are certain key questions that must be answered, certain things on which we have to make up our minds. It is as well to bring them to mind now, not that we can discuss them in any great detail until we have facts and figures before us. But they are the problems we have to face.
We will have to place before ourselves the question of what percentage of national income we are prepared to spend on education of all types. In that regard, I think we all agree that in this country we will have to spend at least the same proportion as other countries spend in this particular matter. I for one think we will have to spend more, because in this country we depend for our development on our natural resources and the greatest natural resources we have in this country is brains. This is the great resource from which we will have to draw if we are to keep pace with the development of the countries of the remainder of Europe. So we face the question that we in this country will have to spend a higher percentage of our national income on education than any of our partners in the OECD. If we do spend this amount and spend it well, I think the effect will be self-compensatory.
When we have decided how much we will spend, there comes the difficult problem of how this expenditure will be allocated. I think we are entitled to ask the Minister in the terms of this motion to give us some indication of what his views are on this particular topic. We have to allocate this expenditure between primary education, post-primary education and higher education. These are problems which must be solved and solved explicitly. They are targets which must be specifically determined before an educational plan is worthy of the name.
Again, we have to decide where our concentration is to be. Are we to concentrate on the abler children or shall we concentrate, as I believe we should, on all of our children? In regard to post-primary education, we have the extremely difficult problem of how our resources should be divided between the 10/15-year olds and the 15/18-year olds. Even if we have decided on the branch of education on which we wish to spend a certain amount of money, again we have to decide whether we shall spend this money on scholarships, on school facilities or on the training and the adequate remuneration of the teachers.
We have to decide for ourselves how our economic plan will be carried out, what would be the emphasis in education on what I might call verbal subjects and what will be the proportion of education in practical subjects. We have to decide whether the schools which will be the basis of our effort in post-primary education should be comprehensive schools or separate schools. We have to make up our minds firmly on what are to be our curricula and our examinations.
The Minister has given some idea of his thinking in this regard, but, as I said on the last day, I think he has given too little information on this and we ask him for more. In 1963, the Minister announced that on the basis of the principle that there should be some post-primary education for all, he proposed to introduce the idea of comprehensive schools, to set up technological colleges and to reform the certificate examinations. That is practically two years ago and it is reasonable to expect that these ideas should have been worked out in some detail. Accordingly, I think it only reasonable that we should ask the Minister how far this planning has gone.
Since 1963 the Minister has in the course of certain speeches in the Dáil given some additional information. He spoke of the committees which would run the comprehensive schools. He mentioned these schools would be responsible for something like 25 subjects and he gave an indication of the location of the ten regional colleges. I should like to ask if he would not, when replying to this debate, give us further information in regard to this. I think it has been evident during the debate that all of us in this House wish to have more information from him in regard to the comprehensive schools. There are certain questions which I would put to the Minister on this point. Some of them have been directed to him already.
Firstly, in his original statement of May, 1963 the Minister indicated he proposed comprehensive schools for certain type areas in which no school was available. I quote from what the Minister said on that occasion:
Provision needs to be made for those for whom neither secondary nor vocational schools will be available and that provision should contain such variety as would offer the best curricula.
There seems to be some change of attitude on the Minister's part in this regard. I should like to ask the Minister, specifically, if he still intends comprehensive schools should be located in those areas where no other school is available or has he, since May, 1963, altered his ideas on this? Does he now propose to have these comprehensive schools integrated with existing schools and in some way connected with them?
I should like to ask the Minister, specifically, whether he still looks on these comprehensive schools as serving the areas which originally served a radius of ten miles? At various times, in discussions, the Minister has spoken of these schools as containing 150 pupils and at other times of containing 225 pupils or more. I should like to ask if the Minister would indicate his considered view on this particular point?
Reference was made to the question of transport charges and the charging of small fees. Again, I consider we would not be unreasonable in asking the Minister to be more specific on this particular point.
There is another point in regard to the comprehensive schools that I should like to put to the Minister. May I say I have no objection, in principle, to comprehensive schools but I consider it would be advisable in the first case that the comprehensive schools should be treated rather as an experiment and that the Minister should not put, as it were, all his hopes for post-primary education in the comprehensive schools. I should like if the Minister would give some indication as to whether he is treating these comprehensive schools as merely one direction in which he intends to move. If he does he should, at the same time, inform us how he proposes to provide schools outside the comprehensive system.
There is a great deal of natural unrest that these comprehensive schools may attract all the vocational support which is going to be given to post-primary education under the proposals which the Minister is now making. Again, reading through what he said in 1963 and what he said in the Dáil since, it is very difficult to get an idea of the curriculum of these comprehensive schools. The Minister has said they are going to do everything which is at present done in the secondary schools and they are going to do everything which is at present done in the technical schools. Does the Minister really mean this? Does the Minister intend that subjects such as Greek and Hebrew will be put on the curriculum of comprehensive schools? These subjects are on the curriculum of secondary schools and are subjects for the intermediate and leaving certificate examinations.
The Minister said that the curriculum of the comprehensive schools will consist of 25 subjects. The Minister should be far more specific on this. It seems to me that these schools, if they are to work efficiently, certainly should have some subjects which traditionally belong to the secondary schools and some which traditionally belong to the technical schools. It seems to me that all the subjects which are taught in both these schools were added up and it was said: "You have got to do all these subjects." That does not seem to be very good curriculum planning.
The Minister said, in regard to broadening the intermediate certificate, that the subjects to be taken will be Irish, English, mathematics and two or three other subjects. I should like to ask the Minister, in the planning of these comprehensive schools, how many subjects does he think on an average will be taken in the schools and how many subjects, on an average, does he anticipate will be taken in the intermediate certificate examination by pupils in these schools? As I said before I have no objection, in principle, to these comprehensive schools.
There are amongst post-primary scholars different aptitudes. Up to this these aptitudes have been served in the ordinary secondary and technical schools. There has been in these schools an amount of scholastic class distinction. I consider, in general, it would be a good thing to see students integrated in a system where there is no distinction between the different type of scholars. More important than that there is a necessity that some of the students, scholars and pupils, at any time, should be able to cross over from one academic stream to the other. This is a vital point in regard to any scheme of post-primary education which is to be developed in this country. Every pupil differs and some of them develop in different ways. Therefore, there should be complete freedom, at any time, for a pupil to be taken from one type of course or one group of subjects to another, which now appears more suitable for him. The best way of doing that is to allow this flexible cross-over and to organise the whole of our post-primary school system in this way. I consider that there is an onus on the Minister, if he is going to rely heavily on comprehensive schools, to prove to us that this is the best way in which to allow this cross-over to take place.
There are a few other points I should like to mention, now that we have this opportunity of debating them. The Minister, on some occasion, I understand, indicated there would be no entrance examination to these comprehensive schools, that nobody would be prevented from entering them. Does this not create some sort of difficulty? There is an entrance examination to almost every secondary school. Part of the Minister's scheme is that there will be a common intermediate certificate examination to be taken by secondary schools, to which there is an entrance examination on entering, and by comprehensive schools, to which there will be no entrance examination. It seems to me that this will create some difficulty. These are, perhaps, minor points but I consider, on this occasion, that it is as well they should be mentioned.
The second proposal which the Minister made in his press conference of May, 1963 was in regard to the technological colleges. As I understand it, he proposes something like ten or 12 regional colleges and that they would be concerned largely with the training of technicians and with the age group from, say, 15 to 18.
Again, here, when we read what the Minister has had to say on this, we see that he has indicated that in these technological colleges there will be a core course of English, Irish and modern continental languages, mathematics, physics and chemistry and, in addition, two further subjects. This, indeed, appears to be a very heavy course and I would like to ask the Minister what is the difference between the course which would be taken by somebody at a technological college and the course that would be taken in a secondary school on the science side because the Minister has indicated that it is intended that the leaving certificate which would be taken by a student at a technological college should be comparable to the present secondary leaving certificate, that it should be the basis of matriculation and that it should be a preparation for the university.
In particular, it has been indicated that the training in some of these technological colleges would be a very suitable method of training and that the leaving certificate would be a very suitable form of matriculation for certain university faculties.
In this regard I take it that one of the faculties most concerned would be the faculty of engineering and I would like to ask the Minister whether this is what he means when he speaks of the preparation in the technological colleges being the basis for entry into certain faculties in the university.
On this point there has been, as far as I know, no consultation with the engineering schools of the university nor with the Council of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland, which is the controlling body of the profession from the point of view of professional standards.
I think there is a danger here that there would not be realisation of the type of preparation which the university looks for in regard to students coming up today into its technological faculties because, in the university, technology as such is not taught in modern engineering schools until the third and fourth year of the four year course. The technology, the practical aspects of engineering, are not taught until a solid foundation of science has been laid down on which the applied science of engineering can be built and it is no benefit to a student to have learned anything in regard to mechanical engineering practice or electrical engineering practice before coming to the university if he has learned this at the expense of taking time away from his fundamental mathematics, his physics or his chemistry. The scientific foundation is the proper bottom foundation course and any idea that the technological faculties would welcome a purely technological slant in technical school children is wrong. I for one wish to state here quite categorically that we do not wish for that. What we wish for is that the students should be trained broadly and generally in both liberal subjects and pure science and it is on the foundation of this latter that their technology can safely rest.
Of course, I have been speaking, say, of those who would pass from a technological college for further professional training but I would like before I conclude to say something about the education of technicians. This is a subject which has been very much in the minds of those of us in the engineering profession who for the past ten years or so have been concerned with the problem of the engineering work force and the contribution the engineering work force can make to economic development in this country. At last, I think our work in this regard is bearing fruit and many others outside the engineering profession have realised that here we have a key problem in economic development, that here is one of the great stumbling blocks in our economy at the moment, one of the main factors which are hindering greater advancement. I would just like to say a few words about this particular problem. It is a vital need but it is a need that is often very imperfectly understood.
For the past year or two, the word "technician" has begun to appear in the newspapers and it has been the subject of discussion at seminars, et cetera, but, even so, there still is a lack of clear understanding of what a technician is. I would describe the function of a technician and the idea of a technician to the House somewhat in this way: a technician is a person with a scientific training in a specialised field who applies proven and tried techniques to some particular operation. Since he has his scientific training, he is quite distinct from the skilled craftsman whom he is now replacing in the modern industrial economy. He is also distinct from the professional technologist, whether professional engineer, professional physicist, professional chemist, in that he is trained in a specialised field whereas the applied chemist, the applied physicist or engineer has been trained over a broad area and has been trained over a broad area in order that he can develop new techniques or can adapt new techniques from outside the country to the particular needs of this country.
The technical function of the technician lies somewhere between the design of the product and its actual production by the skilled worker. Though he is trained in a narrow field, he needs quite a broad education. He must be educated in science; he must be educated in his own technology; he must have a good general education or he is incapable of keeping himself up to date, and he must be well trained in regard to the human factors which are all-important in industry.
The position is that in modern industry in Europe and throughout the world, ten per cent of all employees fall into this particular class. Roughly speaking, if we take modern industry, the managerial group will account for about one per cent; technologists will account for about two per cent; the technicians will account for about ten per cent; clerical workers for ten per cent; skilled operatives for about 65 per cent and general workers for about ten per cent and this is the type of team which runs modern industry in every developed country in the world. This is the sort of team which runs modern advancing industry in all our competitors on the export market.
Where do we stand? If we were to be level with them, about 10 per cent of our employees should be technicians. Our actual position is that something more like one per cent of our employees in our transportable goods industries are technicians. We have here one of our most tremendous shortages. We have here one of the results of the failure down through the years to have a proper manpower policy, to be able to foresee what would be the key needs in regard to special types of workers and be able to fill the deficit. The engineering profession has since the year 1956 been making repeated submissions to various commissions and to the Government on this particular point. Having put forward that in regard to technicians, there must be, if we are to bring Irish Industry into its proper competitive position, a complete policy in regard to this.
While not all of this policy is the concern of the Minister for Education, a great deal of it is. If we are to solve this problem, there must be, of course, a proper policy in relation to manpower. Once we know the manpower, there must be a proper policy in regard to training. When technicians are trained there must be a proper policy in relation to their utilisation. Above all, there must be the framing of these policies in such a way that the technicians will have a proper and a separate status in the community. One of our greatest failures, I think, has been in regard to the technicians we have. We do not understand what their function is and, therefore, such technicians as exist are not recognised as playing a special and a distinctive role in industrial production. If we are to give them their proper status I suggest there must be some properly organised national council which will issue for the whole country and for all classes of technicians in all trades and assisting all professions a universally acknowledged diploma which will carry in relation to technicians the same status as a university degree carries in regard to the professional technologist in industry.
Such a policy has been put forward repeatedly over the past few years by Cumann na nInnealteoirí, the Engineers Association, by the Institute of Civil Engineers, by the Institute of Electrical Engineers and by various other bodies. Unless this problem is solved a great deal of the effort that will go into the technological colleges in the training of technicians will be largely wasted. The social problem must be solved if the educational effort is to be worthwhile. I suggest, therefore, that in this particular regard in the colleges of technology the technicians the country needs so badly could be most excellently trained. We could, I think, produce the particular men we want by training them in the colleges of technology up to a technical leaving certificate standard on a broad basis, to be followed by two years' full-time or four years' part-time, at the end of the period giving them a national diploma.
There is one further point that should not be forgotten in all this. When we plan for the future and when we decide how we will change our system of post-primary education in order that the generation about to start post-primary education will be better trained for the future both as individuals and members of the community, we must not forget the position of those who have already left school. This must be a vital part of any policy and any plan in relation to education. It is vital for all of the three objectives of education I have mentioned. We should not neglect them because, if we treat education as the development of the individual, then these individuals have a right to share in the reform of education. The reform should not be only for the generation that is coming up. Those people who, through our failure in education policy in the past, have not been raised to their full development have a right to share in the reform of education.
The second objective I gave as being the handing on of culture. Too many of our people have left school without receiving either an outline of our national culture or European culture, of which we form a part, and, more seriously still, without the ability or the motivation to absorb that culture during their adult life. Here, again, these must not be forgotten.
The third objective I gave is the training of the work force. We will not solve our problem of training a work force that will sustain continuing economic development merely by training the new recruits to industry. There is no doubt that we shall improve matters if we make sure that the new recruits to industry, and other walks of life too, are better trained than those who preceded them but there still remain those who have already entered the work force and they must not be either neglected or abandoned in any educational plan. This is a very special and a very particular problem. We may think we have in our present technical schools the means of developing these people further. There is no doubt that we have in our present schools very excellent courses, but these courses are not of the type suitable for the full and proper education of these people in the future. We must remember that these people who are already out working, who left school at 14, 15 and 16, have a right in educational reform and we must not look upon their future education and their share in that educational reform as something that is in the nature of a hobby, something part-time. There are difficulties.
If these people are to be re-adapted and given some more education than they have had and more adaptability than they possess they cannot be trained as children are trained. The same scheme that we use in regard to the training of children cannot be used in regard to them. We could, I think, well follow the example of many of the experiments which have been carried out in France in this regard, experiments in which people in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties have been retrained. Very often this has been done voluntarily by industry and local groups. I do not think there is any need to discuss these things in detail. I merely indicate that if we are to have an educational policy that is really worthwhile, then we will have to take care of these as well as of everybody else.
There is one final point upon which I should like some information from the Minister. It is a point that has been neglected so far in all his speeches. What are his proposals in regard to the recruitment and training of teachers to supply the manpower for this policy? If the question of how many teachers will be needed and how they will be trained is not thought out in detail everything else will be worthless. Summarising, if we remember the three aims of education, and if we examine, we can, I think, harmonise these aims. We can do that if we survey the situation carefully and continuously and plan for education, and if we plan in detail and not merely an item here and an item there, thinking up a principle here and a slogan there. It must be done in detail. While we cannot expect the Minister to give us his plan in detail in advance of the report of the inquiry into Investment in Education, I think we can rightfully expect far more detail than we have had in the past few years and, before we go ahead, following the publication of the report to which I have referred, we should in this House have a worthwhile debate on the whole subject.
