I think I explained this on the last day and went into details as to the manner in which under the Ministers and Secretaries Act certain of these Departments, including the Science and Art Vote and the Technical Education Vote are now under the Ministry of Education, and in consequence of the passing of this Act it is considered advisable that these Votes should be placed under the Ministries in question. Accordingly we have brought up alternative Votes and in the sum total there is a difference of only £270. There is a slight alternation in connection with the Appropriation in Aid, which amounts to something like £56,000. I explained that at some length on the last day, and I do not know that it would be anything more than occupying the time of the Committee if I were to go into it now. The Endowment Fund is in process of being apportioned and the portion applicable to technical instruction services is shown as a receipt from the Church Temporalities Fund. The balance to credit on the 1st June, 1924, applicable to technical education is also shown as an Appropriation in Aid. Apart from that and the explanation I gave the last day there is no main alteration in the Vote. A slight adjustment has been made in connection with one service, and that I explained on the last day. Other than that there is no alteration, except this brought about by the Ministers and Secretaries Act. I move the amended motion.
COMMITTEE ON FINANCE. - VOTES 43 AND 61, TECHNICAL EDUCATION.
The Resolution now reads: "That the Resolution come to in the Committee on Finance on the 10th day of July in respect of the salaries and expenses of the Department of Lands and Agriculture and of certain services administered by that Department including sundry grants in aid be amended to read as follows: `That a sum not exceeding £137,432 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1925, to pay the salaries and expenses of the Department of Lands and Agriculture, of certain services administered by that Department including sundry grants in aid; and the salaries and expenses in connection with technical instruction from the 1st April, 1924, to the 1st June, 1924.' "
Vote 61 would, therefore, complete the whole education estimates if taken now. Is that the President's suggestion?
Yes.
Will the President make the motion?
Yes. I move:—
"That a sum not exceeding £209,440 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1925, for the salaries and expenses connected with technical instruction."
This covers the salaries and expenses. I will allow the whole question of technical instruction to be discussed on this.
I take it the Minister will make a statement on this subject.
The President will.
In the past the provision for technical instruction has been included partly in Votes; that is, certain sub-heads of the Estimate for the Ministry of Agriculture and certain sub-heads of the Estimate for Science and Art, and partly the Endowment Fund of the Ministry of Agriculture. The Ministers and Secretaries Act has allocated to the Department of Agriculture the administration of technical instruction, and accordingly the opportunity has been taken to place all charges in connection with this service in the one Vote for the 10 months of the financial year, during which the Act will have been in operation. Furthermore, the Government has come to the conclusion that it is undesirable generally that public services should continue to be financed through special funds rather than through moneys provided by the Oireachtas, and its policy is, as time and opportunity offers, to bring such funds to an end and place all charges connected with public services on Votes. In this Estimate a beginning of this policy has been made, and accordingly expenses formerly borne on the Endowment Fund of the Ministry of Agriculture are now being charged directly on the Vote.
Would the Minister give some general outline as to the policy he intends to adopt with regard to technical education in view of the fact that it has been transferred to his Department? We would like to know if the policy that has been pursued is likely to be the policy of the Department in future. Before we discuss the matter, one would like some information on it.
As Deputies are aware, my charge of this Department, while it has come into effect for a certain length of time, has not yet become really effective. That is to say, I cannot claim to have that minute, complete and comprehensive knowledge of the schemes and details of technical education as at present existing that would justify me in proposing any new policy at the present time. I have no statement, therefore, to make with regard to any modification of the policy that has been carried on by my predecessors in regard to technical education.
I wonder has the predecessor any hints to give as to the policy that should be pursued.
Does Deputy Johnson suggest that hints should first be given to the Dáil or to myself?
I think it would be very interesting and entertaining if he were to give them out publicly.
Deputies are aware, I take it, that so far as legislation would be required to implement any new policy of technical education, that would not arise here, because if the Minister were to decide on any new policy involving legislation, he would have to introduce legislation, and a discussion would take place on that. Any discussion now must be a discussion as to where there is any administrative change. I take it the Minister means there is not.
I take it this subject of technical education hangs very much on primary education, and the effect of one is reflected, to a certain extent, on the other. In view of all the defects that have been pointed out in regard to primary education, we want to know exactly, seeing it is rather affecting technical education, how far the Minister was desirous of going, or intended going, in order to remove these defects and make technical education more effective than in the past.
One does not complain of the amount of money that is spent on technical education. At least I do not. But I do complain of the value we get for that money and I think the result is deplorable. On all sides those who have to do with technical education are unanimous in complaining of what it is doing in this country of ours. The Minister says that he is new to this work, that he is anxious to get information about it that will guide him in, possibly, making better use of the money devoted to this particular purpose in the future than has been done in the past. We have in many places, particularly in the City of Dublin, exceedingly fine schools, excellently equipped, but unfortunately they are very badly attended. When we come to the question of attendance, the extraordinary fact is that the attendance at our technicals schools in Ireland, particularly in the Free State, is one of the lowest amongst the more educated communities to-day. I suppose in the Free State in proportion to our population we have probably the lowest attendance of any country so far as technical schools go.
took the Chair.
It is hard to get the figures on the subject. That bad attendance is particularly unfortunate and the first point I would lay stress on is that the Minister should inquire why it is so. We have pointed out that in our opinion the cause of that bad attendance is the low standard of the pupils leaving the primary schools. When I was speaking on this subject a little while ago I mentioned that the report of a conference that was held to inquire into the question of the training of apprentices, stated that a very large percentage of the pupils coming from the primary schools were unable to take advantage of the education given in the technical schools, by reason of the low standard of their education. For the information of the Minister and for the information of the Deputies who are interested in this subject I will just read one paragraph from that report. It says:—
"No doubt was left in the minds of many members attending the conference that the great question to be solved before Technical Education could accomplish its work was to secure that students must receive a more thorough primary education Employers and Primary Education Authorities were unanimous in stating that 75 per cent. of the lads entering industrial life were unable to pass a simple qualifying examination necessary to enter a Technical School. Employers testified that skilled tradesmen were often unfitted to be sent to work in the country because of their inability to keep the simplest accounts or to write legible letters clearly expressing their business; not to mention their shortcomings in other directions essential to their efficiency."
Then the report proceeds:
"The root of the evil is to be found in the wretchedly bad attendance of the pupils at the Primary schools." In connection with the question of attendance we had hoped to see a Bill brought in during this session, because there is no matter more urgent. We have not got the Bill. I suppose we will have to keep stressing the matter until we get it.
It is ready.
Let us have something from the Minister's Department, because, really, we have little from the Ministry of Education since the Dáil has come into existence. We have had few proposals from it, and I do not know that there is any subject more urgent than the question of primary education in Ireland. The question of bad attendance is a crying evil. In the Free State, it is only necessary for a boy or girl to attend 150 days out of the school year. A great many of them unfortunately do not attend that number of days, and owing to the deficiency in the present Education Act it is impossible to compel them to give better attendance. The conditions on the other side are quite different. In England and Scotland, under the Education Act, the pupils are compelled to attend every day on which the schools are open, or to show good cause for non-attendance. The result is that they get a higher average attendance there than we do. As has been pointed out before, the low attendance of those pupils in Ireland is one of the principal causes of the low standard of Primary Education in Ireland. While I state that we do not complain so much of the amount of the Estimate for Technical Education, we do certainly complain of what we get for it. I am satisfied that until the system of Primary Education is very materially improved, we will not get the improvement that we hope for in Technical Education.
There is one point that has always occurred to me as a grievance on the part of young students in Dublin, and it appears the same thing is true of the Free State generally. The student who is attending a National School is thereby debarred from attending a technical school, and it is only after leaving the National School that we get them in the technical school. I could never understand why we should debar the pupil attending the National School from attending the technical school. I have asked many times for an explanation of it. The barrier exists but we can get no explanation of it. Possibly the Minister could give us some reason. Take a boy of 12 years of age. Some boys I am glad to say are fairly well advanced at that age. Such a boy may be anxious to go to a technical school and get some information that will be useful to him in his subsequent career. Yet he is debarred, unfortunately, as long as he is attending the primary school. That is one point to which the Minister might devote some time, and see if that barrier could not be removed. Another point is that in order to raise the standard, which is so essential from the industrial point of view, and from the point of view of the boys of the future and the point of view of the country, the Minister should consider the question of the leaving age in the primary schools. The question, as you can see from what I have stated, affects the technical school. There is no use in raising—if the Minister be disposed to do so—the leaving age in the primary school to 15 years or 16 years as long as that barrier stands—that is, as long as the boy attending the primary school is debarred from attending the technical school. If that barrier is to be extended from 14 to 16 in future, it is obvious that the standard of technical education will be lower even than it has been, because the boy or girl cannot attend the technical school until after 16. What I would suggest to the Minister, if he is disposed to raise the leaving age of the primary schools to 16, is that he should remove that barrier certainly after 14 and make the two last years attendance at the technical school compulsory. It has been long my view that this voluntary system, as we have here, of technical education will not prove effective. If we want to get these students to do some work in the technical schools as in the primary schools, attendance will have to be compulsory in both. But if we could get the Minister, as we have been urging, to raise the standard of age to 16 and to make the last two years compulsory, I think that would produce a much better type of boy and girl than we find at the present moment.
The Minister's explanation, in one of his statements, why the boys attending the technical schools show such a low standard of education was that after leaving the primary school a certain time elapses before they come into the technical school. The Minister was right in one way and wrong in another. He was wrong with regard to the average student. The average parent tries to get his boy or girl to attend the classes in the technical school immediately after that boy or girl leaves a primary school, so that if immediately after leaving the primary school the boy or girl is unable to pass a simple, qualifying examination in the technical school it shows how seriously deficient our primary system is. As soon as a boy or girl reaches the age of 16 he or she qualifies for the unemployment grant. Attached to that unemployment grant there is the educational qualification whereby the recipient must attend so many hours at certain schools during the week. It has been found that the standard amongst those boys and girls is exceedingly low. As I stated before, it came within my own knowledge that the percentage of girls unable to read or write, and who were applying for the unemployment benefit was as high as 10. That is a very unfortunate state of affairs at the present time, but I actually found that percentage to exist in the city of Dublin. It is obvious that industry in the future will be recruited very largely from our technical schools. At the moment there are signs in that direction. One of the explanations for the lack of apprentices to be found in industry, which is such a serious item, was that apprentices could not get into industry—that they could not get apprenticeship in the different trades. The only means that the conference could devise for getting over that difficulty was to recommend industrial scholarships out of the technical school—that is, that the technical schools should offer so many scholarships each year and that these scholarships should go to maintain certain boys during the unproductive years in the technical schools. That recommendation was dropped for a couple of years because there were no funds wherewith to finance these scholarships. The matter was taken up by the City of Dublin Technical Education Committee and, to their credit it must be said, they devoted a considerable sum of money to these apprentice scholarships with very considerable success. That is the system, to my mind, that ought to be adopted and enlarged, because it is one of the few successful means that one has of getting intelligent boys and girls into the different trades. To show you the necessity for some such system, I will quote some figures in connection with our trades from which it will be obvious that something further is necessary in order to recruit those trades.
The trades I happen to know most about are those in connection with the building industry. I find that there has been a reduction in the number of carpenters—I am taking the census of 1901 and the census of 1911, since unfortunately there was no census in 1921 —in the city and county of Dublin of 15 per cent. In the number of bricklayers in the same period there has been a reduction of 30 per cent. Plasterers have decreased by approximately 15 per cent., and masons and stonecutters by 20 per cent. I think if you were to take the trades connected with other industries, you would find that, like the building trade, there had been a similar reduction in the number of tradesmen. That is due, primarily, to a falling off in the number of apprentices, and something must be done in the near future to recruit those trades. To show you the effect of the falling off of recruits to the trades, we find that in the same years the number of general labourers in the city and county of Dublin has grown by 20 per cent. You have an average falling off in the trades of 20 per cent., and you have an increase in the number of unskilled labourers of 20 per cent. That is particularly unfortunate from the national point of view, because while the demand for skilled tradesmen is increasing owing to the shortening of the number of hours and other causes, the demand for unskilled labour is decreasing, through the introduction of machinery and other causes, so that under our system, as it exists at the moment, we are encouraging unskilled labour and discouraging the trades.
I am sorry to have to labour this point, but as the Minister said that he was unskilled in these matters, I am anxious to put before him lines upon which he might usefully occupy the vacation and the succeeding months. This is a matter of very great national importance. We have on the one side a material falling off of the number of tradesmen. On the other side we have the immense increase of 20 per cent. in the amount of unskilled labour. There is no occupation for that unskilled labour. The result is that large numbers of unskilled labourers are being added year by year to those who make the demand for the dole. So that this is a serious national problem. We are adding, year by year, to the numbers claiming unemployment allowance and we are not recruiting the trades, as we might usefully do, through the technical schools. One might speak at considerable length on the urgent need for the development of the work of technical schools, particularly in the direction I have mentioned, of looking upon the technical schools as a recruiting field for industry. I should like the Minister to examine very fully into this question of apprentice scholarships, and see if that scheme could not be usefully enlarged to a very considerable extent. That would mean additional funds, but if he came before the Dáil with a scheme dealing with a national problem of that character there would, I feel sure, be no difficulty in getting the funds that would be necessary. It is obvious that if we devote money to that purpose we will absorb numbers of young boys and girls through this system into the different trades, who at present have no opportunities, drift into the unemployed market and eventually come on the dole. We would be doing useful work by making useful citizens out of these and reducing the numbers looking for the dole in future.
It seems almost futile to be discussing the development of technical instruction until we are assured that every boy and girl will get a proper primary education, as has been mentioned by Deputy Good. At the present time we know that that is not the case. It cannot be too often impressed on those responsible, and brought to the notice of the country generally, that so far as primary education is concerned there is a deplorable want in the matter of seeing that all children receive a suitable primary education, and are compelled to attend school in order to receive that education. We cannot talk usefully of technical education while children may leave school at the age of ten, eleven or twelve years, and while the school-leaving age, as it is at present, is under 12 years. What happens in most of our technical schools— it may not be the case in the city of Dublin, which Deputy Good knows more about than I do—is that boys and girls go there after having been away from the national schools for three or four years. The result is that in most of these schools special courses, called introductory courses, have to be instituted in order to give these boys and girls some chance of availing of the advantages of the technical education. These courses are almost entirely doing the work that should be done in the national schools and quite a large proportion of the pupils who were in attendance at national schools will be found to be enrolled in these introductory classes. That shows that there is no proper co-ordination as between the primary and the technical schools. It shows the necessity for seeing that boys and girls should remain at school until a suitable standard of education has been reached and that they should receive, on leaving a national school, a certificate which would show that they had reached that standard. There is no such leaving certificate in this country. That is one phase of the question. Everything that has been said by Deputy Good is, I think, within the knowledge of most Deputies who have given the matter any attention. We have, I think, reason to complain that, in spite of the fact that this matter has been repeatedly brought to the notice of the Ministry, the Bill which has been so long promised to secure compulsory attendance at school has yet to make its appearance.
There is one matter in that connection that the Minister might give his attention to and that is the encouragement of day classes in technical schools, especially for the younger pupils, as against the evening or night classes. I do not think it is fair to expect a boy or a girl who may go into industry, say at the age of 15 or 16, to attend an evening class after a full day's work. Arrangements ought to be made, and I am sure could be made, by cooperation between employers and technical committees, to allow a certain time to these boys and girls to attend a technical school during the day.
There is another aspect of this technical education question that ought to be inquired into. Technical education is, I think, rightly intended for young people who have left the national school between the ages, say, of 15 and 18 years. But it is well known to most Deputies that the so-called technical schools in the country are not attended by these young people, but rather by adults. This is especially the case so far as manual instruction is concerned. Many of these classes are simply devoted to showing those who attend them how to make things. I have known many such classes where those attending made various articles of furniture, with varying success, as Deputy Gorey reminds me. The point I wish to emphasise is that making articles of furniture, and other articles which would be useful on farms, at these classes should not be the object of technical education. I am afraid that is too often looked upon as the real object, and classes are established in a district in order to show people how to make gates and doors and various articles of furniture for the home. There are some matters of detail which, unfortunately, owing to the way the Estimate has been prepared, we are not in a position to criticise very fully. In the other two Votes I noticed that a comparison is given with the amount expended in 1923-24. In this one we are confined to one column. Perhaps, however, it would be better to discuss the general question first, and leave the details over.
It has always struck me that the people of this country do not place technical education in the position of importance that it should occupy in the national life. I think it would be better if the point Deputy O'Connell raised was emphasised. He spoke of the co-ordination that should exist between the primary and the technical schools. I referred briefly on a previous occasion to the reason why the pupils who attend technical schools do not get the full advantage of the teaching given there. That is owing to their lack of primary education. The Minister, when replying, said that it would be hard to expect the pupils' earlier studies—if you give them the name of studies—to be of any value to them in the technical schools. What I meant was, that it was not a question of the pupils having forgotten what they had learned, but the fact that they had not attended the primary schools regularly.
It was not a question of pupils going over work that they had done previously, but was due to the fact that they had never gone through the primary course. As Deputy O'Connell states, the sooner a Bill providing for compulsory attendance at school is introduced the better. Every section of the community is keen on seeing such a Bill carried into effect, in the most drastic manner, if necessary. The technical schools have not been a success because the pupils who go to them have to do work that they should have done in the primary schools. It would be well, as Deputy O'Connell suggested, if the Minister could make arrangements so that children on leaving the primary school would at once proceed to the technical school. In the country districts children attending the national schools can attend the technical schools. I do not know what the position is in Dublin. I am not aware that there is any rule to prevent children who attend primary schools also attending technical schools. If the rule is different in the city I am not aware of the fact.
To my mind, one of the causes of the failure of the technical schools in Ireland has been that the children who go to them do not look forward to any definite calling. There has been no industrial development in the country for the last few years. Many things were against such a development. If there was an impetus for the development of industry the pupils would prepare to take up definite work. There is now a possibility of industries being started in Ireland, and when firms require a certain type of apprentice I think the advantages of technical education will be considered. The Ministry of Education will be able to help in that respect by giving youths a definite training for the particular work that will be required in an industry. That has been done to a large extent in America, and also in England and Scotland. Boys trained in that way will be ready to fill places in certain industries. Deputy Good referred to the lack of skilled tradesmen in Ireland and to the falling off in the numbers who go to such trades. That may be due to the fact that better wages are offered skilled tradesmen in other countries. For many of those who stay at home there is not steady work. In some cases, possibly owing to trade troubles, and to other causes, tradesmen have gone to America, England and Scotland. Their departure is a loss. If the country was developed I do not think that would continue. If industrial development was apparent young men would be very ready to apprentice themselves to trades at which they could get steady work and good wages. Owing to the conditions that prevailed for the past few years, tradesmen, such as masons, carpenters and plasterers, have, unfortunately, had a good deal of idleness. That state of affairs does not encourage those men to put their sons to such trades.
I think it would be a very great advantage if a scholarship scheme was introduced for pupils attending the technical schools, in order to make them keener in their work. A diploma from the technical schools would be an imprimatur for employers when selecting apprentices for industries. I do not agree with Deputy O'Connell when he complains that the technical schools turn out what he intended to call “handy men.” In the rural areas it is a very great advantage if boys are taught to mend gates and doors. There is plenty of other work for the tradesman. In Denmark boys are taught how to do such work. I do not suggest that pupils should do skilled labour but in the rural areas it is right they should get an opportunity of learning to do the every-day work of the farm or home.
We should have something quite the same for boys as we have in the Domestic Economy Classes for women and girls. In these classes they are taught not only the every-day work of the house, but also lace-making and crochet. They are taught in these classes everything they ought to know in connection with the home, and the knowledge is of the greatest use to them when they get a home of their own, whether it be in a small farmer's home or in any other home. They are taught all necessary and useful work such as mending and repairing, as well as how to cook, a subject which many of them need to be taught. It is necessary, too, that boys should be taught to do useful work at home, such as mending and repairing gates. I hold that to teach them to do these things would not interfere with the employment of skilled labour at all. The suggestion that Deputy O'Connell made to the effect that children should attend day classes in technical schools is not, I think, a feasible one. Great difficulty, I imagine, would be experienced in getting children from the National Schools to attend day classes in the technical schools. In the towns at any rate facilities are provided for young people to attend technical classes at night, and it is a pity that these classes are not availed of to a greater extent than they are at present. I think that the Minister for Education should see that in districts where you have industries in existence that facilities are provided for young people to prepare themselves to take employment in these particular industries. You have small industries scattered through the country, and it is desirable, I think, that the young people should be specially trained to take up employment in them. The specialised training afforded to children in cases of that kind would react favourably not only on the young people themselves but on the particular industry in which they happen to be employed, because the special training they had received in their youth would, I am sure, be reflected in the nature and character of the work done in that industrial concern. These are just a few points that I desire to impress on the attention of the Minister for Education.
I just want to say a few words on the general question of technical education. I agree with a great deal that has been said by Deputy Good and Deputy O'Connell as regards the class of students that go from the primary schools to the technical school. I have the authority of principals of technical schools for the statment that a good many of the students who enter the technical schools are not fitted to receive the education given there. As Deputy Good and Deputy O'Connell stated, these students, when they enter the technical schools, have to be taught there the subjects which they should have learned in the ordinary course at the primary school. Deputy Good laboured the question of apprentices to a great extent. The only solution that I see for this question is that apprentices should be allowed by employers to attend technical classes during their ordinary working hours. That is the only way, I think, that you will ever get good tradesmen, and this is a question I suggest that should be taken up by employers as well as by the Government and the Minister for Education. My suggestion is that boys serving their time to a particular trade should be allowed so many hours off in the week for the purpose of getting special instruction in their own trade at the local technical schools. In a technical school that I have an intimate knowledge of, there is a class for boys who are engineering apprentices. There is a special class for them, but as they are not allowed off during the day it is impossible almost to get them to attend their own class at night. I would impress on the Minister and on Deputy Good and others who are vitally interested in this question that it should be made compulsory on employers to allow their apprentices off, say, four or six hours in the week to attend day classes at the technical schools. In the technical school that I have acquaintance with, I may say that while the ordinary classes are fairly well attended at night the apprentices' class is the worst attended that we have in the school. I hope that the suggestion I have made with regard to employers allowing apprentices to attend classes in the technical schools during their ordinary working hours will be favourably considered, not only by the Minister, but also by the employers. The adoption of my suggestion would, I think, in the long run, be to the benefit alike of employers and the young fellows now serving their time to some particular trade.
There are just a few words I would like to say on this question. I have made a fairly rough rule to guide me when I ask any questions about the education of the children of the workers. I generally ask myself what are the methods adopted by wealthy parents in regard to their children, and I generally find myself answering the question by saying that is just the thing we want for the children of the workers.
I ask myself what is done by a wealthy parent who has a boy who is designed for the law or the medical profession; I ask myself how do they proceed about education for that profession, and I think something similar might well be done, because that is always fairly successful, in regard to the education of the workman's child who is destined to go into some trade. And, consequently, I consider that the solution of the problem—that is the problem in regard to technical education —is that it should be linked up, as it is designed to be linked up in this scheme with primary education, and what is now called secondary education. It seems to me inevitable, if there is going to be any reasonable solution, that the school age for the average boy and girl should be continued until 16, or 17 or 18 years of age. It should be compulsory certainly up to 16, and the technical school should be utilised for laying the foundation for any industry, you might say the theoretical foundation of the science which would be applicable in any industry that might be taken up by any boy or girl. Technical education which is spoken of as a sort of part apprenticeship is, I think, quite different. It may be run almost imperceptibly into the continuation of primary school life. The primary school tuition should be run on and then a certain portion of the school time should be devoted to science, to the physical sciences and such other training as would fit the boy or girl for the life that he or she is likely follow for his or her livelihood. It seems to me that only after that the specialised technical education, such as apprenticeship is associated with, comes into operation, and then you have again the same technical school simply in the higher regions for these specialised classes. I imagine that a technical system such as is talked about should be specialised only for the older pupils, and those who have left school life for a trade that they are likely to follow. With that idea it seems to me there will be no break between primary and technical, or primary and secondary, education.
One would imagine that even secondary would be a kind of branch of the technical, but I think it would not be well to visualise a technical scheme as something broken off from and distinct from the primary school system. Then there is the complaint about those boys who leave the primary school and, having had a broken time for three or four years, pass through a blank, learning nothing, and forgetting everything except what they pick up in the streets, and then go back to a technical school where, as Deputy Good said, they have to begin to learn the basis of education all over again. I hope that the Minister, in looking on this problem, will realise how closely it is associated with a good foundation of primary education, and that primary education will have to run on and work into a technical instruction scheme. I think that when you come to an apprenticeship period, what Deputy Hughes spoke of will be best answered, that is to say, that the period of technical instruction will have to be during the working day. At the ages of seventeen and eighteen, I take it it is almost universal that a youth does not want to bind himself, after serving seven or eight hours at a particular kind of work, to go back to school, which is another kind of work like that which he has been at, and not to change from it. He wants the evening for recreation, for sport, athletics and the rest. I understand that in the North of Ireland—in Belfast, at any rate, where you have the trades preparatory schools—the technical schools have been availed of pretty widely for apprentices, and that that scheme has been successful; that the employers have allowed part-time in the working day to be spent in the schools, and it is generally availed of and has been successful. The only thing I have to say on the matter is what I have said in regard to the necessity for continuing what is called the primary period and running it into the beginning of the technical instruction; and that it is useless to allow a boy to break off school, at eleven, twelve, or thirteen years of age, and not to think of technical education until the boy has gone to an apprenticeship and served a couple of years boiling pans of water and running messages perhaps to bookmakers for the workmen—for I am sorry that that is the sort of thing that does prevail.
We want to stop that.
Yes, I will help. The whole business is complicated by the practice that unfortunately we have been led into of taking boys from school at too early an age, and then after they have been three or four years playing about, doing nothing practical or valuable, sending them to a trade or letting them take a chance of getting an unskilled job. I hope the Minister will be able to give us at an early date some general outline of a bold scheme dealing with the period beyond twelve years of age for children under his care.
. A good deal of the ground covered in the discussion of this Vote was covered in the discussion of primary education, and of that I do not complain. I think it is very valuable that we should have this matter brought forward or emphasised before us and, if possible, I hope one of the results will be brought before the public. The discreditable feature of the matter we have to deal with is that apparently some thirty-five per cent. of the parents in this country neglect the elementary duty not merely of citizenship, but the duty of nature in looking after their own children. That is a very large proportion of bad citizens, as they must be described. In the previous discussion I was one of those who emphasised the significance of a break of a year or two between two stages of education, and when Deputy Johnson was describing how young people are prepared for such professions as those of the lawyer, physician or clergyman, that consideration came very forcibly to my mind. There is no parent who looks forward to preparing his children for any of these professions who would not regard a break of a year, not to speak of two or three years, as something intolerable, something not to be dreamt of, and, I am afraid, that when we get older and get detached from our earlier experience, we sometimes forget the earlier effects of it. Everyone engaged in teaching knows that failure to follow a continuation course of teaching, whatever it may be for, one, two or three months, is a very serious matter. For a young lad or girl who is attending a secondary school or university, through illness, or anything of that kind to be taken off work for a period of one, two or three months is a most serious matter.
It is still more serious in the case of the stage which pupils should reach in primary education. If they break off at that stage from the subjects in which they have been instructed and there is no continuation—in a limited number of cases it will depend very much on the circumstances of the community, and on the occupation of the individual—in the great majority of cases there is a complete break and often an effacement of all that is required. That is why it is necessary to have introductory instruction for students entering technical schools. I assure you, sir, for the benefit of Deputy Good, that I am trying to learn something and I will try to follow his advice and meditate on many things that I have heard when the recess comes round. I am a little inexperienced in these things. If I had the experience in the ways of legislation that I have now, I believe that I might have contrived to have an Attendance Bill before you by this time, and I beg of you to put it down to my inexperience. I hope, however, that one of the first measures with which we will have to deal after the recess will be a Bill with regard to the age of attendance at the schools. There is no rule prohibiting attendance at any age but there is an age fixed. I suppose the wise people who shaped all these things before my time came to the conclusion that they must draw the line in advance of perambulators and go-cars, and they fixed the age of fourteen as the age under which grants would not be paid, that is to say, that pupils under fourteen, under the existing rule, are not entitled to be registered, so that grants would not be paid in respect of them. They can, however, attend, and to some extent do attend. I think we cannot regard that as ideal. They should not be there; they should be completing their education elsewhere, and I do not think that I could accept, as a general principle, the desirability of students attending in the morning at a primary school, and attending in the evening at a technical school. It seems to me that four and a half or five hours a day is quite enough teaching for any youngster under fourteen years of age.
Supposing some of these youngsters had passed a certain standard, would it not be advisable to relax that rule?
I do not think that there is a rule against it.
If they do not get fees it is obvious that there is no encouragement to them to go there.
Those are rather exceptional cases. It occurred to me also in listening to the discussion —but others will probably be better informed on this subject than I—whether any combination could be attempted of allowances for unemployment and technical education. The statistics which Deputy Good gave with regard to the reduction of skilled workers remind me that it is many years since I found that out. Any person who follows our statistics will find that for a generation and longer, while the population of the country is decreasing, a far larger ratio of decrease has been taking place in the number of skilled workers than in the population generally. I do not think that technical education, while itself a good thing, will be found a remedy for that. The reason is, we have been drifting from manufacture into distribution. Our commerce is mainly a distributive commerce, and the economic conditions, rather than the educational conditions, have been responsible for the fact that the largest diminution in any element in our population, which is itself a world phenomenon, has been the reduction in skilled workers. That is a fact that, if it is to be ascribed to education, is not to be ascribed to the education of the working classes, but to the education of the other classes in this country. I have here the last public returns for 1922 with regard to the attendance in technical schools. Some figures in it are instructive. Out of 14,589 young men who attended, only 546 were entered as boys who had just left schools or college, and 791 were boys who were still at school or college. It is noteworthy that the proportion of those who attended and were not attached to any occupation, or not engaged in any stated occupation, numbered 1,832. That is a very high proportion. In the case of girls the total number was 21,000. Those who had just left school numbered 1,043. Those still at school or college were 734, and those not in stated occupations, 6,171—a very large number, between one-third and a quarter of the total. The total number of young men was 14,589, and the total number of girls, 21,464—that is to say, about fifty per cent. more girls than young men. With regard to apprentices, I have gathered that that is true which Deputy Johnson stated, namely, that it has been found very satisfactory in other places, including Belfast, to allow apprentices to attend technical and trade preparatory classes, and to count their attendance as part of their apprenticeship.
I hope it will be gathered from what I said that I regard any break in the education of any young person, from the time that education begins until his life's occupation is taken up, as a very serious matter and, if it is imposed by conditions which we can control, a great injustice and a great failure. I think it would be the duty of the Department of Education to draw up a general outline of education which will leave none of those gaps. I do not say it would be possible in the conditions under which we now stand to carry a scheme without some gaps in it into immediate operation, and I need not remind Deputies that it will appear to the taxpayer, at the moment he is paying taxes, as something more costly. The increase of school attendance even under the present conditions will raise the expenditure. The filling up of those gaps will raise the expenditure very much more. So at the moment the taxpayer who is paying his taxes will feel it is costing him a great deal more, but we hope that there will be other moments when he will feel that he is being amply repaid for what he spends in that way. I admit I am merely a novice in all those matters of technical education, but I will try to be as meditative as I can whether on holidays or not.
I would like to congratulate the Minister for having given us a promise that the long looked for Bill in connection with school attendance will be one of the first to be dealt with next year. I hope it will embody one of the features, at all events, we have been urging in connection with technical education. The Minister has told us with regard to the barrier I complained of, about a boy who had not reached the age of 14 being unable to attend a technical school. The Minister told us that that was part of an old Act that was in existence when he came into office. I hope this new Act will do away with the bad system, and I need only remind the Minister that under his own primary system a boy who attains the sixth standard can leave school. A number of boys attain the sixth standard at the age of twelve or thirteen. What is the result? In many cases they have the privilege of leaving school. Parents take them away to make some use of them. Some leave at twelve and others at fourteen. Now, we have a rule in force that debars even that child from technical education. It is obvious that there must have been some justification for this rule, so that a boy having attended so many hours in a primary school should not be called upon to attend a technical school. In my young days that was not considered much of a hardship, but in those days it appears to be a very serious grievance to call upon a boy to work in the evening if he has done work in the daytime. There seems to me to be boys who are anxious to take advantage of further education in the evening. Why should those boys be debarred?
From every point of view that barrier of refusing technical education to any boy until he has reached the age of fourteen is exceedingly unwise. With regard to the question of apprentices— I need not remind the Dáil it is quite a big question—it is not one that one would attempt to discuss here. The barrier that has been pointed out is that employers have not given permission to those boys to attend a technical school during their term of apprenticeship in the daytime. That is not a serious barrier at all. That is got over in the ordinary way by the recommendation of the conference. Deputy Johnson has rightly pointed out that in the early days of apprenticeship a boy learns very little of his trade, and is called upon to do things that are not identified with the trade he is learning. That difficulty is being got over in our technical schools here in Dublin by educating a boy in a technical school for the first two years of his apprenticeship. Those are the two useless years. He is paid under a scholarship maintenance grant for those two years in the technical school. He learns there the theoretical side and a considerable portion of the practical side of the work he intends to follow and goes into the employer's workshop as a very useful apprentice. As one who has had experience of boys who come in with and without that experience, I say there is no comparison whatever between the two of them. The one is a useful, intelligent, well-conducted boy who is immediately able to take advantage of the opportunities afforded to him in the workshop; the other is, more or less, indifferent to his trade, not having the same educational advantages and not knowing the same about the trade. There is no comparison between them, and therefore I urge the Minister to take up strongly this question of apprentice scholarships. He stated he was unable to see the connection between apprenticeship and unemployment.
No.
I am sorry if I have taken him up wrongly. There was a Minister on the front benches the other day who could not see the connection between the development of commerce and unemployment.
I have already given figures which show a serious falling off on the one hand in the number of skilled trades and a serious increase in the unskilled trades. As I say, employment in the unskilled trades is decreasing. Consequently if we are adding to the number of unskilled year by year, we are adding to the number of those for whom no employment can be found, and who will be perpetual drawers of the dole. That is not good for them, for our country, or for anybody. Instead of giving that number year by year to the ranks of unskilled labour an endeavour should be made to get the larger number into the ranks of skilled labour. Skilled labour at the present moment, instead of being recruited from the boys of the cities, is recruited from the provinces and those boys are going into blind alley employment, eventually drifting into the large army of unskilled for whom there is no employment. If the Minister devotes his great ability to this problem he will soon see an important connection between apprenticeship and unemployment, and unemployment can be largely reduced by the development of apprenticeship.