I should like to thank the House for what was on the whole, apart from, I might say, Deputy Ryan's contribution, a very constructive debate. Deputy Lindsay, on behalf of the Fine Gael Party, and Deputy Mrs. Desmond and Deputy O'Leary on behalf of the Labour Party, and other Deputies made a number of constructive remarks on what is after all a matter which should be outside the partisanship that sometimes characterises our debates here. Education is too important a matter to be made the subject of partisan debate. For that reason I am very grateful for the constructive suggestions made not alone on the Bill but with regard to education generally and what we need to do to improve Irish education.
The Bill marks a new breakthrough in education, although I am not going to say it is the be-all and end-all of higher education grants. However, it is the first step we have taken in this direction since the formation of the State and is a logical follow-on to the introduction of the free post-primary education scheme. It was imperative, once we had taken that step, to ensure that the children who participated in free post-primary education and were brilliant enough to achieve the standard we will set out by order under the Bill would have an opportunity to go to university if their parents were not so well circumstanced as to afford to send them to higher education. In practical terms, this is in effort to give reality to the social principle of equality of opportunity.
It is, as I say, a substantial step; but we have made the Bill flexible so that we can improve it as the years go on. Such matters as the standard set down, four honours, and the means categories set out in the schedule to the explanatory memorandum will be the subject matter of ministerial orders which can be varied from year to year, can be expanded and amended to suit the particular requirements of the pupils and the educational needs of the particular day. I want to stress the importance of this, because, within the flexible framework of this Bill, we can expand the opportunities and improve the categories to whom they will be open. We can adjust the means levels and thereby keep pace with changing values in regard to money and salaries and wages and also keep pace with the requirements of the future. I want to emphasise that this is the first substantial step. It is a breakthrough, but it is only the beginning. As far as the resources of the country allow and as far as we see the educational requirements in the future, we can amend and adjust both the means test and the standard requirements.
It is fair to say that this is a very substantial step forward and marks a breakthrough when one considers the figure of 275 pupils in the current year who secured scholarships last year. We are jumping that figure from 275 to somewhere between 900 and 1,000 boys and girls who will now participate in this scheme. This is a substantial improvement in one year.
The grants will now be given to every student in the country. The standard to be applied is not the particular county in which the child lives: the only standard is the standard of achieving four honours and the requirement of being within a particular means category with regard to income. This will apply to all the children of the nation equally. Those people who spoke about some counties being progressive should remember that mere residence in a county is not the criterion that should be applied to a basic social need such as the education of a child whose talents are fully fitted to further education. It has been a fundamental weakness of the scholarship system heretofore that it has been administered by local authorities and that local authorities had to make a contribution from the rates to it. As a result, the poorer counties did not have as many scholarships as the richer. Deputy Gilhawley's county of Sligo had only four scholarships, while places such as Dublin and Galway had many more. In counties such as Sligo and Leitrim the local authorities, due to the pressure of rates on small holders and small business people, could not face the prospect of raising the rates to provide for sufficient scholarships. That very fact meant that some of our children, because of the county in which they were born, were more privileged than others.
We will do away with that county caste system in regard to higher education in the future. We are setting out here, irrespective of the capacity of the county to contribute towards a child's higher education, that every child, no matter where he lives, will come in under the criteria which will be set out by way of order under the Bill. This is a substantial step forward. For that reason alone, we can call the Bill a substantial breakthrough in regard to higher education.
A number of points were made in the course of the debate. Deputy Lindsay was concerned with a point in regard to marks. I think it was also mentioned by Deputy Molloy that some subjects are more important than others. I want to assure the House— it will be written into the order I will make in regard to the qualification standard—that the four honours requirement will be related to four university subjects, important subjects in any department or faculty of a university. Drawing, for instance, is not a university subject and therefore will not come into this category. The whole purpose of student grants is to equip the child for higher education and logically the only subjects that should count as regards the standard should be subjects to which the child will be devoting himself or herself in the university.
The point was also made that our standard of four honours was in some way too severe. Yet if we examine the whole structure of higher education not only in Ireland but throughout the world, we find that it is not at all severe. Already the universities have decided to limit the fee-paying students to two honours at least. Indeed, the Provost of Trinity College said he was thinking of raising that figure to three honours in the leaving certificate as a requirement to getting into Trinity College. The university authorities not only here but in Britain and throughout the world are moving towards more stringent qualifications of entry for fee-paying students. Is it not reasonable that in regard to a free grant scheme we should propose four honours when the university authorities are thinking in terms of three honours for fee-paying students?
Again, this is wise thinking, because, as was mentioned during the debate, of the amount of wasted resources from the point of view of the universities and from the national point of view in the matter of educating children who are unsuitable for the courses they are pursuing and who drop out after one or two years. They are not suited to what they are doing and yet they get in easily. If we had stringent standards, these children would not get into the universities and they would probably get into some other stream of employment more suited to their needs. So the whole thinking is to make qualification for entry into higher education as stringent as possible so as to ensure that children who are equipped for it will go into it.
There is always the difficulty of the late developer. That is not a matter we can budget for. We cannot budget for everything. We have to do the greatest good for the greatest number. If our universities are to be crowded out by having a low level of entry, to the detriment of people with high standards who are prevented from going to their fullest extent in higher education, is not the obvious thing to do to raise the standard of entry and secure that in most cases the people who are equipped for higher education can go into the faculty they choose?
Deputy O'Leary raised some very interesting points and indeed I go along with him in much of what he says. I think he was over-critical of Irish education. He was over-critical of the drop-out rate which is not quite as serious as he suggested. Indeed, this is a factor in which there has been a tremendous improvement in recent years. It might surprise the Deputy and the House to know that over 50 per cent of the 16-year age group are in whole-time education. That figure is on a par with the figure for every other country in the world from which we could obtain figures. Again, it is not perfect. We have a long way to go, but it is not quite as bad as Deputy O'Leary suggested. I agree that we have not by any means seen the end of the problem in regard to Irish education.
Education today has become an explosive issue. Everyone is interested in it. The class barriers are disappearing. Parents now rightly feel that their boy or girl is entitled to go as far in higher education as their talents will bring them. The whole idea that higher education was for a particular class and that people did not look outside their class is disappearing. Every boy and girl now feels that he or she is entitled to a place in the sun. Every category of society feels that there has been a tremendous improvement in recent years. I would say that at present in our society education is the most talked of subject and the one in which the greatest interest is shown. That is a good thing because we are coming to the very roots of living when we place a high premium on education. Equality of opportunity is a basic social impulse. We are seeking to provide it in our State. I see emerging from this not only the betterment of the children concerned who wish to make progress, but the betterment of the nation as a whole because if the best talents come to the top, no matter in what class of society, in trade, commerce, industry, the professions, business of all kinds, techniques of all kinds, technological skills of all kinds and so on, society as a whole is the better for it.
Deputy O'Leary raised the question of people getting into blind alley occupations to which they were not suited. I regard that aspect as being very serious. We have all seen human tragedies arising out of the fact that people were in the wrong jobs. One's daily work is a very important aspect in one's life. We have seen the tensions and troubles that are caused by people being in unsuitable jobs, jobs from which they derive no personal satisfaction. If there is a lack of job satisfaction, tension is created which is reflected in the person's attitude at home and throughout his life. We want to ensure in so far as possible that we can guide our boys and girls along lines of education which will lead them to jobs for which they are equipped and jobs which will be available.
At the moment in conjunction with the Minister for Labour and the Department of Labour, we are accumulating data with a view to publishing within the next 18 months a comprehensive document which will set out for the years ahead up to 1998 the jobs that will be available in our community and set out the various streams of education which will lead to the jobs which we will project as being available in 1998. This will be a detailed analysis and we may have to engage outside consultants. The projections made may not be perfect but they will be projections within the limitation of the knowledge and data available to us at the moment. Subject to the inevitable limitations of our present knowledge as regards making forecasts, I feel this will be a worthwhile exercise in giving a broad outline of where we are going in regard to education and in regard to manpower requirements for the future, where the jobs will be, what categories of jobs will be available and how the parents can now make mature decisions on how to plan their children's future.
It is within that context that I will be announcing within the next few days a whole new structure in regard to the leaving certificate which will come into operation from September, 1969. The idea is that we should have five separate groupings within the leaving certificate, ranging from the academic, on the one hand, to the scientific, on the other. Within these five different groupings there would be three subjects in each group. Students coming from the intermediate certificate can specialise in some degree—not to a total degree because there are evils in over-specialisation—towards a type of leaving certificate which will enable every boy and girl to go ahead into technological or university higher education. If we plan out the whole educational system now on the basis of where the job requirements will be and how we should train our children towards the job requirements, looking at education from the primary to the higher education level, I think we will be taking practical steps along the road towards having a community in which talent is used to the fullest extent. In saying this, I do not want to take from the other object of education which is that of education as an end in itself.
It is important that we should have education geared to job requirements. At the same time, education is also an end in itself. I do not want, in any way, to seek to take from the fact that not alone is education an end in securing a job for a person but is also for the purpose of enriching one's personality, of improving one's life and one's appreciation of the quality of life and of developing a capacity to utilise leisure in the best possible way. I want to emphasise again the totality of education in that primary education, secondary and vocational education and higher level education, both university and technological, all form part of a whole. This is the thinking behind the new comprehensive approach towards the new kind of secondary education. We would wish to see the secondary and vocational education streams coming together in a comprehensive stream. Along with the five groupings we have in the leaving certificate, we have the first streaming at the Intermediate stage between technical and non-technical education. This is helped by the abolition of the primary certificate, thereby giving a broad education in the primary school which would gradually be streamed between technical and non-technical in the post-primary stages and then on to university level.
I hope, in the near future, to be in a position to announce the proposals for the total rationalisation of all our higher educational facilities. I wish to emphasise that the merger discussions between UCD and TCD are, again, just part of this total hope. We want to rationalise all the higher educational facilities in the country and not alone the place UCD and TCD must get but the place, for instance, Kevin Street Technical Institute and Bolton Street Technical Institute must get, the place Galway University will get, the place Cork University will get and the place the university in Limerick might possibly occupy. Viewed in that connection, we shall have proposals to announce in the near future on the whole structure of higher education.
It is in this context that I should like to have this Bill regarded by the House, the context of its being considered as a contribution towards ensuring equality of opportunity in higher education, the context of free post-primary education, the context of our system of primary education and the context of the rationalisation of all higher education. We should be able to say, shortly, to the Irish people where we are going with regard to Irish education. We should be able to present the total picture soon. Once we know the road ahead and once the people appreciate precisely what we are planning in regard to education the question from then on will be one of continual supervision of the over-all system and the allocation of more resources to it.
One other matter I should like to mention is the question of publicity. In regard to this scheme which has been set out here in the explanatory memorandum, I propose to publish a booklet inside the next few weeks that will show, in graphic terms, precisely what is meant here in regard to the means test and to the categories of people who will qualify under it. I propose to circulate this booklet to the principal of every secondary school in the country. In regard to further education proposals, I think we should do this and we propose to have it done.
I propose to have any of the innovations to which I have referred in the course of my speech, such as the new structure of the leaving certificate examination, proposals in regard to higher education and the streaming of our students towards job opportunities in the future, circulated to the public in attractive booklet form. Apart from those of us here who are parents, the people who will make the decisions in regard to Irish education are the parents of the future. They are the people who will be taking the mature, responsible decisions and they should have the information on which they can base these decisions presented to them in an attractive, readable form so that they can get the message and know precisely where they are going. With this consciousness at the moment of the importance of higher education, it is up to us not alone to pass the legislation to make the finances available but also to inform the people fully of the progress we are planning along the road towards complete equality of opportunity.
