The Combat Poverty Agency's criteria for the identification of schools in designated areas of disadvantage was the basis for the selection of schools to participate in the Breaking the Cycle scheme. In the foreward to the report, Educational Disadvantage in Ireland, the Combat Poverty Agency states:
Education has a central role to play in improving the life chances of young people today. This is particularly the case for young people coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. Children who have been born into poor households or live in deprived areas are most subject to educational failure and subsequent labour market exclusion. ...Poor educational achievement can lead to low confidence levels and a poor sense of morale and self-confidence.
The likelihood of obtaining qualifications is associated with social background; those from disadvantaged backgrounds constitute the majority of those with no or low qualifications. Thus, to improve the life chances of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, equal access to education and equal opportunities to participate in and benefit from education are not sufficient. Positive discrimination is required to ensure at least fairness, if not equality, in outcomes. ...Poverty is about exclusion, isolation, and powerlessness, as well as material poverty. Poverty affects both urban and rural communities. Unequal distribution of resources and opportunities is the main reason for the relatively high level of poverty in Ireland.
Under the heading Rural Disadvantage, the report states:
It appears that about 60% of pupils defined as disadvantaged under the criteria adopted in this report live in rural areas. It may be assumed that the vast majority of them are in the 50% of primary schools which do not have the services of a remedial teacher. Further, the Early Start project is confined to urban areas and less than one pupil in twenty living in a rural area is in a school designated under the Scheme of Assistance for primary schools. Thus, the access of the rural disadvantaged to schemes for disadvantaged pupils appears grossly unequal. It may even be that the lack of access to these schemes contributes to the high level of disadvantage in rural areas.
In view of these statements, it is extraordinary that the Breaking the Cycle scheme discriminates against pupils in the disadvantaged rural schools, which have been selected to participate in this pilot scheme, vis-á-vis those in the disadvantaged urban schools which have also been selected for the scheme. The scheme states that the pupil teacher ratio in urban national schools shall not be more than 1:15. In the case of Our Lady Immaculate National School in Darndale, County Dublin — an urban disadvantaged national school — the number of teachers will, I understand, be increased from 17 to 29 to meet the terms of the scheme. However, because the 1:15 ratio does not apply in rural schools, the pupil teacher ratio in Letterfrack national school, County Galway, which is also in the scheme, remains at 1:30. Due to a small decline in numbers recently, the number of teachers has been reduced from four to three. Had the urban disadvantaged national schools criteria been applied equally to rural schools, the number of teachers at Letterfrack national school would have been increased from four to seven.
The Department of Education stated that it based the Breaking the Cycle scheme on the criteria set out in the report of the Education Research Centre, yet that report does not recommend that a pupil teacher ratio differential of this magnitude should apply between urban and rural disadvantaged schools. There is no educational or philosophical reason for this deliberate discrimination against rural disadvantaged schools and one is forced to come to the conclusion that the reason for discrimination must be political. The least that pupils in disadvantaged schools are entitled to is equality of treatment under such a scheme, whether their school is located in an urban or a rural area. However, that is not the case under this scheme. Children in second class in a disadvantaged school in an urban area, for example, will now have the advantage of one teacher per class which will consist of no more than 15 pupils. However, in a rural school 30 children from four different classes, beginning with junior infants, will sit together in the same classroom and be taught by one teacher.
This scheme was designed to deal with disadvantage. However, in the case of rural schools it seems to perpetuate the disadvantage rather than taking a serious step to remove it. Why is there discrimination? Surely it cannot be justified on any grounds? Will the Minister for Education alter the rules now so that urban and rural schools receive equal treatment under this otherwise excellent scheme?
