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Cabinet Committees

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 28 July 2020

Tuesday, 28 July 2020

Questions (7, 8, 9)

Alan Kelly

Question:

7. Deputy Alan Kelly asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on education will next meet. [16887/20]

View answer

Mary Lou McDonald

Question:

8. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on education will next meet. [18475/20]

View answer

Richard Boyd Barrett

Question:

9. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on education will next meet. [18564/20]

View answer

Oral answers (8 contributions)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 7 to 9, inclusive, together.

The Cabinet committee on education was established by Government decision on 6 July last. The next meeting will take place in September. It will oversee implementation of programme for Government commitments in the area of education. Its membership comprises the Taoiseach; Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment; Minister with responsibility for climate action, communications networks and transport; Minister with responsibility for education; Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform; Minister for Finance; Minister with responsibility for further and higher education, innovation and science; and Minister with responsibility for children, disability, equality and integration. Other Ministers or Ministers of State will participate as required.

In addition to the meetings of the full Cabinet and of Cabinet committees, I meet Ministers on an individual basis to focus on particular issues. I met the Minister for Education and Skills and her team last Friday to discuss the reopening of schools. The Government had met prior to that as well. The Government is committed to ensuring that schools will reopen for the new school year as fully, safely and normally as possible. The Government announced the Roadmap for the Return to Schools yesterday, including a support package of well over €375 million and we are now supporting schools to reopen safely in the coming weeks.

The announcement yesterday was welcome. Seven eighths of it could have been announced in June. However, the funding amount of €375 million is welcome; there is no doubt about that. I have a number of questions. I raised this issue with the Tánaiste last Thursday. In the month remaining, principals and boards of management are expected to advertise, interview and recruit all the staff in four weeks. They are being asked to commission minor building works in four weeks, which is impossible because there are not enough people available to deliver to the work in such a short space of time. They are being asked to train their own teachers and staff in new procedures, secure PPE and deal with a whole range of other issues in a short space of time. How is that possible?

Specifically, what is happening with special needs assistants, SNAs? They are barely mentioned in 53 pages of the document. Is the Taoiseach aware of that?

They are barely mentioned. The roadmap mentions some training for SNAs. They work in close proximity with children who need an awful lot of help. What is the plan for SNAs? Will more of them be taken on? I have been asked this direct question in the past two hours. What training will be put in place and what number of SNAs will be in place? SNAs are important for students who need to catch up on their education. How are principals and boards of management meant to hire all these staff and have all the minor capital works done? Specifically, because this question genuinely needs an answer, will more SNAs be taken on? How will their roles change and what will be expected of them?

The allowance of €30,000 can, in fact, be payable to a party of Government. I take it the Taoiseach is not now in receipt of that allowance. Is it fair to say then that he stopped being in receipt of that allowance once he received his seal of office from Uachtarán na hÉireann? The Taoiseach might clarify that.

On the plan, all of us want to see children back in school safely and teachers back in the classroom. The Government's plan places a huge burden to act very quickly and, in some cases, to carry out tasks that seem almost impossible in a tight timeframe. There is anxiety among many parents and teachers I have spoken to that time has been left so tight.

There has been an abject failure by successive Governments to deal with Ireland's class sizes. It is an omission in the Government's plan that it has not moved to address this issue. The plan references, for example, classrooms of 80 and 60 sq. m but in many schools, older buildings in particular, classrooms are much smaller than that.

At post-primary level, 1,080 new positions are to be filled in the next five weeks but we are none the wiser as to how it is proposed to achieve this. There is to be a provision of 200 substitutes at primary level but this figure is fewer than half of the substitutes required on a daily basis and has been acknowledged to be wholly inadequate.

To allow for physical distancing, as well as refurbishments we need extra physical space. This was true prior to the onset of Covid-19, where we had the most overcrowded classes in western Europe. They were unacceptably overcrowded. Now that is completely intolerable and incompatible with human health. While I understand refurbishment using libraries and sports areas is not ideal because at some time we will need those spaces again, we need additional physical capacity. There needs to be an ambitious and aggressive plan of locating additional physical space.

I am sure other Deputies could point to this. It is like the point I was making about empty properties. In the middle of Dún Laoghaire, a former further educational college has been sitting empty for six or seven years. It was a scandal before the Covid pandemic but now it should be used to provide additional space for schools. On the Merrion Road beside St. Vincent’s Hospital is a building called the Seamark Building, which has probably been empty for a decade. It is about as big as ten or 15 big school halls. That is how big it is, and it is just sitting there empty. It is outrageous. I think Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has significant empty space in Cherrywood. That is one administrative area, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, with which I am familiar.

This is against a background where many of our school students are in prefabs. Gaelscoil Phádraig in Ballybrack has been using prefabs for decades. How can that school expand? Over the summer, as a matter of urgency we need to get out and get these spaces that are sitting empty and use them to provide extra capacity for our primary and secondary schools, and indeed for some of our universities.

In an exchange we had earlier in July, the Taoiseach confirmed to me that the Department was giving active consideration to making changes to the leaving certificate of 2021 in order to take into account the very significant loss of face-to-face teaching time that the students who have just completed their fifth year studies have suffered. In that exchange, he also indicated to me that an outcome or a plan would be in place by the end of July. We are nearly there; we have a day or two to go. I am hoping the Taoiseach might be able to give some information to the House and to students as to what changes and what tapering will be made to the leaving certificate of 2021. Has this been discussed? What is the current position?

I will start with Deputy Kelly’s comments. It is unfair to single out one and say there was no mention of SNAs. The entire roadmap is about three school settings: primary schools; special schools and special units; and post-primary schools. That is made very clear in the document. The overwhelming idea is a safe school community, embracing all the school staff. That is not just teachers, principals and SNAs. It is also caretakers, assistants and others who make the school community tick.

This is a very important milestone for society and we need everybody behind it. We need to keep community transmission of the virus very low. That is the most effective way for us to keep our schools open. It is the single most important national objective in the coming months. Children’s life chances are limited if they are out of school for too long. Particularly for children with special needs, we need to do everything we can to ensure that not only do we reopen the schools but that we keep the schools open for the long haul. That is what the roadmap is trying to provide for. If certain events happen, can we intervene?

There will be additional SNAs; I do not have specific figures. There will also be substitution and supervision for SNAs because I take the Deputy’s point that they are up closer in many respects. Advice from the health authorities is very clear in calling for common sense and balance if a child falls or whatever. The requirement is for 1 m distancing, but sector-specific application and balance will be applied to that.

Primary schools are well used to the minor works grant scheme. This year we have doubled it, which will enable them to reconfigure classrooms. It is not for big extensions. It can relate to plumbing and electrical adjustments. We need more hot water flowing in many schools. Some schools are up to speed and some are not in that regard. I feel school administration will be innovative enough to apply that funding fairly quickly to optimise space in school settings. We need to bear in mind that all of this was worked through with the partners in education, representing SNAs, teachers, management, parents and children. The students’ voice was quite significant this time around during the Covid crisis. We saw it with the assessment issue in respect of the leaving certificate. Those discussions shaped this roadmap, which did not just come from on high, from the Department.

In terms of the advertising and recruitment, some of this is on the ongoing substitution. The pilot projects for substitution in primary schools worked very well. They feel confident that they can roll that out and that it will not be as big an issue at primary level because there is a greater supply of teachers. At post-primary level there will be challenges with certain subjects such as the science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, subjects and Irish, and we need to be particularly careful there.

Regarding Deputy McDonald’s points, I have covered the primary substitution. A range of options are open to the Department to try to secure the additional 1,000 post-primary posts. However, that will require a significant reduction in the post-primary pupil-teacher ratio for the first time in a long time.

I did not realise that the allowance that I had as an Opposition leader was payable if one went into government. I have made the point that I see the demarcation line being once I become a member of Government, I cease to benefit from that. That is the way I have applied it.

It is a tight timeframe for teachers and for the school community. From talking to people on the ground, my sense is that everybody wants this to happen and they will work in a co-operative and constructive way to enable this to happen and it is very important that we do so.

I would say to Deputy Boyd Barrett that if they can utilise community buildings or other buildings that are available, that is a decision for the schools. There will be considerable local autonomy here and we will be supportive of the schools in using local solutions to solve their problems. I am not aware of the specific buildings he mentioned, but we can follow up on those.

In response to Deputy Barry, the roadmap provides for how we can assess this year’s fifth year students in the leaving certificate next year. Recommendations on the curriculum will be made to the schools. They cannot change the curriculum. I spoke to the chief inspector, Harold Hislop, last Friday. He is a very solid individual who is very strong on assessment generally. They will not be able to change the curriculum, but they are conscious that different cohorts of students might be at different stages of the curriculum. Some might have a certain aspect of English and geography covered. They have proposed to widen the choices in questions that students will have to face in next year’s leaving certificate to take cognisance of the fact that they missed a number of months from school this year meaning that they may not have all the curriculum covered by the end of the year. They are trying to create some flexibility there and give greater choice. That is work in progress and there will be constant engagement with the schools and particularly the leaving certificate cohort of 2021 to ease any concerns and anxieties students may have in respect of the leaving certificate. It is proposed to have the leaving certificate examined physically next year.

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