I thank you for your kind welcome to the Seanad.
I am very grateful this morning to be able to address Seanad Éireann on the Green Paper on Education, "Education for a Changing World", and I am very proud to open this historic debate on education, a much needed debate and one which I believe we should have openly.
I was anxious to bring you, the legislators, into the discussion at an early stage and that is why I sought this debate in Seanad Éireann today. I was concerned to do that rather than have Senators await an Education Bill, as it were, from the Dáil.
I am conscious of the traditional concerns of the Members of the House — a House in which I had the honour to serve for many years — for education and cultural matters which reflect their electorate and indeed their own professional expertise. By way of introduction to your deliberations, I would like to paint the backdrop to the Green Paper and the national debate on it which is now well under way. This will set into a broader context my proposals for change and my intentions for the consultation process.
Let me start by stressing that I am adopting a totally open and responsive approach to the countrywide debate on the Green Paper. I have not adopted — nor do I intend to adopt — an approach that is any way doctrinaire. I do not want the debate to become a victim of political factionalism. I hope we can avoid that. My purpose instead is to harness the energies and goodwill of all concerned in the pursuit of progress and my priority is to create an environment in which progress can be made.
That environment is one in which politicians, parents, teachers, managers and churches will pull together in the same direction, with the needs of students being paramount. Consensus is the only realistic platform for change in education. In this sector above all others, it is people who deliver change, not edicts or diktats. In particular, I will be seeking stability in change, so that students will not be adversely affected by constant changes. I am determined by combining both principle and pragmatism, to bring about genuine improvement where it matters most, in the quality of students' learning.
In its very title, "Education for a Changing World" the Green Paper challenges all of us concerned with education to focus on the future. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths for getting there cannot be found, they have to be made. The making of those pathways changes both the maker and the destination.
In seeking to chart the development of the education system over the next 20 to 30 years, we must all be open to changes in the system and flexible in our attitudes towards it. We must set out on this journey with the most modern maps and with the best possible instruments for navigation. We need to be acutely aware of how change is affecting the entire economic and social landscape.
One feature of the economic environment we have to face is this: knowledge and skill, both totally dependent on the education system, have become increasingly the dominant factors of wealth and job creation. This increased economic importance of learning is already a powerful catalyst in promoting a culture of lifelong learning in most developed countries. This is a shift in emphasis which in itself creates a substantial demand for change.
Education cannot respond to tomorrow's challenges with the answers to yesterday's problems. Current trends tell us what are some of those challenges. Rapid technological and social change means that work skills are made redundant ever more quickly. In particular, many of the skills required in the newer knowledge-based industries become redundant every three to five years. Over the next 20 years, perhaps as many as half of all job categories will change. Some will involve job categories now existing which will disappear. Others will involve new job categories, not yet existing, which will be created. Others again may keep their name but the work done will change totally.
Technology is also demanding that learning must be broadened. I will take just one example to illustrate my point. To maintain a robot one needs to know about mechanics, pneumatics, hydraulics and electronics. All these used to be individual disciplines; for many years they were the responsibility of individual workers. Now, technology is blurring the demarcation between skill areas in almost every kind of work.
The process of creating new products and services — and, therefore, the process of creating new jobs — has become much more complex. It now depends on marrying knowledge and skills drawn across the spectrum of the arts and humanities, the natural and social sciences and the technologies. A modern designer or engineer must synthesise knowledge from all these areas in order to create the new products and services that open up job prospects for other people.
So we need to be adaptable, to be as broadly educated as possible and to commit ourselves to a system of lifelong learning. Adopting a culture of lifelong learning has profound implications for the primary and post-primary education systems. The old idea that life consists of separate periods of education, work and retirement has either gone or will soon go in most countries.
What is vitally important is that people leave school with a desire to be a lifelong learner, and to be capable of lifelong learning because they have the skills to assess knowledge such as literacy and numeracy. There are also major social justice gains from a system of lifelong learning. People who currently "fail" in the education system will have second and third chances to overcome this disadvantage.
I want to turn to a factor which I consider to be of fundamental significance to the country's future. The crucial role of education in shaping society's values and attitudes is universally accepted. One of the ills in society that I see education combatting is what Professor Joe Lee has termed the "dependency syndrome". For me enterprise is the antithesis of dependency and this is the reason it features so strongly in the Green Paper. I do not see the concept of enterprise that clearly in Seanad Éireann this morning because it became a major discussion point conflicting in any way with the academic and vocational aspects of education. I want to say in the Dáil. I see enterprise as completely complementary, in total harmony with the traditional concerns of quality education. It is not an either/or.
Enterprise, particularly in the debate in the Dáil, was painted as something we should not aspire to. What is an enterprising person? For some people it conjures up the stereotype of the pinstriped speculator. CERI, the educational research wing of the OECD, has provided a helpful and much less scary description, one which I am sure will find general agreement. I quote:
An enterprising individual has a positive, flexible and adaptable disposition towards change, seeing it as normal, and as an opportunity rather than a problem. To see change in this way, an enterprising individual has a security born of self-confidence, and is at ease when dealing with insecurity, risks difficulty and the unknown. An enterprising individual has the capacity to initiate creative ideas, develop them and see them through into action in a determined manner. An enterprising individual is able, even anxious, to take responsibility and is an effective communicator, negotiator, influencer, planner and organiser. An enterprising individual is active, confident and purposeful, not passive, uncertain and dependent.
When we consider the notion of the enterprising person in this wider sense — in what I would consider to the true sense — I do not think many people would find it difficult to accept as a major aim of our education system that we develop these qualities more fully in more people, particularly since we Irish do not at the moment appear to have developed this side of our characters as much as people in many other countries. The fact that as a people we are not in general highly enterprising — in this broad sense — is surely something that has cost us dear, not just in economic terms but in social terms as well.
That is not to say that Ireland is not an inventive country, for we are justly proud of our fine writers, artists, scientists and technologists who do top class work all over the world. However, Ireland does not appear to be an innovative country. Our creativity seldom finds its way into new products and services. Innovation depends on two qualities, being creative and being enterprising. We are good at the first, we need to do much better at the second. This requires an educational response where we focus on the promotion of creativity and enterprise.
In emphasising enterprise in education my aim is to complement and certainly not replace the excellent work being done in the promotion of the arts and creativity. For me the arts are central, not peripheral, to the education of every student. I see them as essential to the development of the individual — emotionally, spiritually, intellectually and socially. The arts create in young people a sense of wonder, of enjoyment and of purpose which improves the quality of their lives through participation and through the encouragement of innovative, independent thinking and personal discrimination.
Education in the arts makes a significant contribution to the way young people develop their feelings and understand their emotions. Through it also, students develop an appreciation of our cultural heritage both national and international.
The status we accord the arts in our education system reflects our values and attitudes. A good foundation in arts education for every child in our primary schools must be an educational priority. That foundation should be broad, and it should allow for a wide range of experience in various arts disciplines.
I want to mention three specific developments in this area. First, as part of its general review of the primary school curriculum, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment is undertaking a major revision of the arts education aspects of the 1971 curriculum. The review will include the development of a rationale for each arts discipline with clearly stated aims and objectives.
Second, to assist the professional development of teachers in these areas a sequential and carefully structured programme of training for all primary teachers will be introduced. This will ensure that changes in the arts programmes become a reality throughout the system. Guidelines will also be issued to schools on the development of a school plan for all aspects of the curriculum, including the arts.
Third, as outlined in the Green Paper, some teachers with recognised competence in the arts areas will be seconded to disseminate good practice and to support and advise teachers and schools.
I have attempted to outline in broad terms some of the social and economic trends that the education system needs to be responsive to, but I want to stress that doing this is fully consistent with the developmental needs of the individual. The underlying philosophy of education as clearly stated in the Green Paper is that of contributing to the development of the whole person. This underlying philosophy is not instrumentalism, vocationalism, commercialism or consumerism. I argue simply that economic considerations are among the many factors that we have to take into account. Indeed, to ignore those considerations would be grossly irresponsible.
The attitude to vocationalism running through the report is an extremely broad one. It is not concerned with narrow or outdated ideas of skills, but seeks to promote the quality of adaptability and flexibility. I do not wish to have a narrowly conceived and tightly controlled form of vocational education, and I set my face against the idea canvassed in the Culliton Report of a separate stream of vocational education.
I was at pains to provide clarity in relation to the philosophy of education in the Green Paper. I attempted to do this not so much by defining or describing the process of education but by outlining what I see as its aims. Like all other proposals in the Green Paper, these aims are there for discussion. A consensus will only be reached in the country if education is based on a shared philosophy of education. Perhaps we should focus on building consensus in that area first. I do not believe it will be difficult.
It would not be possible at this stage for me to review all the detailed proposals in the Green Paper. I do, however, wish to touch on one or two of these here. The basic organisational changes proposed in the Green Paper are designed to better serve the fundamental purposes of education which I set out earlier. In particular, the changes must serve the purpose of improving the quality of student learning.
Starting with the school a major centre of learning in each community and the main centre of formal education. The need for and value of representative boards of management at school level arises from a conviction that the overall quality of education will benefit as a result.
Parents are the primary educators; teachers are the professional educators. The quality of education can only benefit from the involvement of both parents and teachers with the school owners in a real decision-making partnership. The right to real, meaningful involvement cannot be gainsaid. The value of their involvement is indisputable.
Correspondingly, of course, the right carries an equal responsibility — a responsibility on parents to reflect the full range of interests of all parents and to promote the good of the school, not simply represent particular interests; a responsibility on teachers to contribute as education professionals and not simply reflect staff interest; a responsibility on owners to treat both parents and teachers on the board as partners in the management of the school and not as customer and staff representatives.
The achievement of this type of real, developmental partnership is a most exciting and challenging objective. It is not simply a matter of new organisation charts for all schools throughout the country. At that, it would only be change on paper. It is much more fundamentally the development of new motivating values, a change in culture, for the benefit I hope of all students.
Critical to the thrust of the Green Paper's approach are the proposals under the title "Equity and Access". There are at least three aspects to equality of opportunity in education: equality of access, equality of input and equality of effect. The very title of the chapter in the way it juxtaposes equity and access is symbolic of the advance from concerns with just equality of access to the even more profound problems presented by equality of input and equality of effect, both of which we are now seriously attempting to tackle.
The home/school liaison projects we are developing to tackle education inequity are comprehensive. They involve parents, they are innovative, their results are being evaluated and they provide for developmental continuity. A further feature of these projects is that the involvement of parents in the pre-schooling of their chidren if facilitated and funded. This is a deliberate act to level the playing pitch for disadvantaged young people at the earliest possible time in their lives. The rationale behind this approach can be put quite simply. If a child cannot read in second standard, everything else is pretty much wasted.
I am conscious of the crucial but difficult issue of what constitutes a suitable curriculum for disadvantaged students. The need for relevance to his or her circumstances and aspirations has to be balanced against its possible curtailment of social mobility. Broader curricula at primary and post-primary levels, combined with increased autonomy for schools in developing school based curricular responses to the needs of their students, offer great scope to make significant stride in this area.
The strategies I am promoting to improve the retention and completion rates at second level of students from disadvantaged backgrounds will in time be reflected in improved participation from these groups in higher education. At this point, I would like to commend the efforts being made by third level institutions to forge links with second level schools in disadvantaged areas. We will have to try to develop more of these programmes in the future. I am very hopeful that early success will be achieved from these types of outreach activities, coupled with access courses and priority admission for students.
Ní fhéadfainn an ócáid seo a ligint thart gan tagairt faoi leith a dhéanamh don pholasaí dearfach cinnte atá leagtha amach agam i leith na Gaeilge. Tugann an Rialtas seo, mar a rinne gach Rialtas eile ó bunaíodh an Stát, tacaíocht láidir d'fhorbairt na Gaeilge i measc an phobail i gcoitinne. Ní leor, áfach, tacaíocht ó bhéal a thabhairt, caithfimid na bealaí is éifeachtúla a aimsiú chun seo a dhéanamh.
Is é beartas dearfach i leith na Gaeilge atá i gceist agam sa Pháipéar Uaine. Beartas é a bhfuil fáilte forleathan tugtha dó. Tá an beartas bunaithe ar fhorbairt na Gaeilge ag leibhéil difriúla: i múineadh na Gaeilge sna ranganna, áit a mbeidh béim speisialta ar chumas labhartha agus tuisceana; i dtimpeallacht na scoile i gcoitinne, áit a mbeidh dualgas ar scoil polasaithe sainiúla a fhorbairt chun na Gaeilge a chur in úsáid lasmuigh den churaclam foirmiúil; sa phobal lasmuigh den scoil, go háirithe i measc tuismitheoirí, chun deis a thabhairt do dhaltaí an Gaeilge a úsáid sa chomhphobal.
Ní féidir leis an gcóras oideachas amháin an polasaí seo a thabhairt chun críche. Tá sé i gceist agam mar sin, i gcomhar le Aire na Gaeltachta agus le Bord na Gaeilge, beartais a chur ar siúl a chothóidh úsáid na Gaeilge i measc an phobail i gcoitinne agus i measc tuismitheoirí ach go háirithe. Tá plean gníomhaíochta ina leith sin go léir sa Pháipéar Uaine agus tá súil agam go mbeidh lántacaíocht le fáil againn don bheartas sin.
Today's debate in this House will, of course, not be the Seanad's last word on this vital subject — nor Senators' last opportunity to contribute to the great national debate that is now in full progress. I look forward not only to hearing what Senators have to say but also to taking it fully into account, as my thinking and the thinking of the Department of Education evolves in the months ahead.