In education, some are more equal than others

We . . . are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence." - W B Yeats (1865-1939), speech in the Irish Senate, 11th June, 1925. It is beyond doubt that we Irish place a high premium on education. We have a long and honourable tradition in learning and successive governments have tried to ensure that sustained investment has helped maintain the highest of standards. Our local communities see the value of education, starting at national school level. One only has to travel through Ireland to see how people have sustained high standards, by lobbying government for more funding for school improvements, and by putting their hands into their own pockets so that their particular school will stand out among others. It should be said at this point that despite the appalling abuse scandals among a small minority of clergy within the Catholic church, the church has an honourable and selfless history of outstanding contribution to education in Ireland. It would be churlish to deny it credit for this outstanding contribution. Nor should we attempt to deny the contribution of our teachers who strive to maintain high standards in our class and lecture rooms. Almost every part of the public sector has come under intense scrutiny during these difficult economic times for our country, to ensure that we are "getting value for taxpayers' money". That attempt to institute financial oversight has strayed into abuse of the supposedly "cushy" positions occupied by public sector workers. The latest silly suggestion is that teachers, who rightly have earned their breaks from the stress of the classrooms, should spend their holidays marking up examination papers as part of their salaries in place of the extra payments they now earn. Perhaps the people who make these suggestions should direct their attention towards the need for enhanced education opportunities for our teachers. We ought also to soften our attitude towards the view that education is there to provide better-educated citizens to drive "the economy". There is an outstanding need to produce well-rounded citizens who will contribute to society in many ways. Credit should not be denied to the remarkable hedge school masters who were the dominant educators in Ireland for 136 years from 1695-1831, working underground for most of that time due to the strictures of the Penal Laws. Anyone who attended a Meath Archaeological and Historical Society lecture by Dr Antonia McManus (author of 'The Irish Hedge Schools and its books 1695-1831') at Trim Library in 2003 must have come away with a deep admiration of those teachers who kept alive the tradition of education in the face of fierce odds, and the people in the local communities who sustained them during those terrible years. It should be a source of deep satisfaction to all of us that Ireland has one of the highest participation rates in the world. Eighty one per cent of our students complete second-level edcuation and 60 per cent go on to higher education. There are benefits here for everyone - for the individual concerned and for wider society. It is an aspiration among Irish educators that every child should have equal opportunity in education. The extent to which we have achieved equality is questionable. Children from less-privileged economic backgrounds will find it difficult to achieve entry to higher levels of education. The minister for education has many tasks ahead of him in reforming the education system. For a start, he could ask himself why we should continue to maintain a system in which our fee-paying private schools are subsidised by the taxpayer. Surely this privilege - at the rate of €100 million a year - so generously extended to these schools has rebounded on non-fee paying schools. It is a system which is indefensible yet our political system continues to tolerate it. It is not so long ago since a report on welfare policy and poverty highlighted educational disadvantage in Irish society. It stated that although there had been significant educational gains by those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, these were outpaced by the better off who continued to "raise the bar" to protect their advantage. There was a suggestion that a radical new response be produced to include some form of centralised or regional applications and school place allocation system at primary and second-level to create a level playing pitch in terms of who goes where. Some parents might want to "buy" their way out of that system but at least this would mean that the taxpayer was not facilitating and funding the promotion of inequalities. Over to you, minister.