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Building a Learning Community

The Challenge

Education is at the core of the Fair Society. A truly universal education system puts no age limit on learning. It is flexible enough to embrace multiple intelligences and talents. And it offers all who access it an equal chance of success, regardless of income, class or family background. By these standards, Ireland's education system is universal in name only.

To build a fair society and a knowledge economy, we must develop a genuinely universal learning community for all of our citizens from the cradle to the grave. Education is about realising one's full potential, but it is also about releasing and harnessing the creative potential of society as a whole. We will never know what we can achieve as a country until everyone has a real chance to contribute to all aspects of Irish life.

The challenge of creating a learning community is a considerable one, particularly in light of the basic problems still blighting our education system. We have no universal pre-school education. Our primary school population alone is set to expand by some 100,000 children, yet we cannot even accommodate the pupils we have now. Pre-fabs pass for proper school buildings. 'Free' schools depend on voluntary donations from parents for basic essentials. One in four children is in a class of thirty-plus. Literacy and numeracy standards are stagnating. Children with learning difficulties wait months for an assessment. One in five will drop out of school before the Leaving Certificate.

The government may wonder why the only resemblance between Ireland now and Ireland in the 1980s is our schools. The answer is simple: you can't buy ambition, or a passion for education. Our schools need investment, but they also need imagination, courage to reform and a vision of Irish education that takes as its end point the kind of skills, confidence and experience we would like our citizens of all ages to possess. Without it, we can only expect more of the same.

Ireland can do better

Labour wants to build a world class education system for Ireland in which there are no barriers to learning. Under Labour, equality of opportunity will be supported by practical measures so that there is real equality of outcome regardless of income, social background or age.

Education is at the core of the Fair Society.A truly universal education system puts no agelimit on learning. It is flexible enough toembrace multiple intelligences and talents.And it offers all who access it an equal chance of success, regardless of income,class or family background.

What Labour will do

Schools - Standards and leadership in schools

In government we will give principals and teachers the support and professional development they need by:

• Making all new appointments of principals for a ten-year period only.
• Requiring all principals to complete or to have completed a designated Master's degree in Educational Management.
• Establishing an appropriately attractive pay scale for principals.
• Making relevant expertise available to boards of management when selecting a new principal.
• Requiring principals and teachers to draw up an agreed programme of professional development for each individual teacher, to be reviewed at the end of the school year.
• Establishing a dedicated fund within the DES to which schools may apply to fund professional development for staff.
• Funding an agreed number of days for substitution per year for teachers participating in supplemental professional development. Devolving greater autonomy to school principals in the use of teaching and other resources.
• Extending the National Pilot Project on Induction to all primary and secondary schools so that all new teachers get supervised on-the-job training during their probationary period.
• Providing financial support for students undertaking teacher training modules as part of their course to offset the cost of their teaching materials and travel expenses.
• We will review the content and duration of secondary school teacher training with a view to further developing practical classroom experience and the interpersonal skills appropriate to a classroom situation.

A more democratic system

What Labour will do:

• Draw up guidelines so that schools can design their own Home-School Agreements. These agreements will set out in clear and inclusive terms the respective responsibilities of the school, parents and the pupil, and will be agreed by all three.
• Oblige schools to publish an annual whole school report. This will contain general information about the school, such as its rules, ethos and extracurricular activities. It will also contain a financial report for the previous school year.

Proper funding for schools

We will:

• Double the primary school capitation grant from €163.58 to €320 to recognise the real cost of running a primary school.
• Increase the per capita funding for all pupils in non-fee-paying second level schools by €300.
• Increase the capitation element of the current Maintenance Grant to €25.
• Increase the ancillary grant for secretarial and caretaker staff to €200 per pupil.
• End the practice of levying rates on publicly-funded schools in the free education system.
• Replace the rest of the complicated grants system for primary and second level schools with a single block grant that can be used on a multi-annual basis if required.
• Have the State Claims Agency carry out an assessment of insurance costs in all schools with a view to reducing risks and premia. Options to be examined will include the centralised purchasing of insurance for all primary and voluntary secondary schools and the indemnification of schools by the state.

Class sizes

We will progressively reduce average class sizes towards the EU norm. We will cap class sizes at 15:1 in schools where there is significant disadvantage and progressively move towards capping class sizes at 25:1 in mainstream primary schools.

Early childhood education

We are committed to providing one year's free preschool education for all children.

Progressing towards equality of outcome

In order to tackle educational disadvantage Labour will:

• Address the needs of all of our school children by 'weighting' each child or teenager according to their personal, social or academic needs, and distributing extra financial and non-material resources to schools accordingly. This method will also be used to determine appropriate staffing levels for schools.
• Schools in disadvantaged communities will have access to a study support fund, which they could use to provide after-school and holiday activities for its students. This could range from music or dance lessons, to training with local football clubs or study skills seminars, and be arranged in partnership with local youth organisations.
• Give pupils access to healthy meals by developing partnerships between schools and local caterers and food suppliers.
• Resource the NEWB adequately so that it can fulfil its mandate and devote some of its energy to pro-actively preventing at-risk children from dropping out of school.
• Develop a social guarantee to all 16 to 18 yearolds of training, a school place or meaningful work. The Fair Society - Labour Manifesto 2007

Improving literacy and numeracy

What Labour will do:

• Require all primary school teachers to undertake more intensive training in literacy and numeracy education, with extra subsequent training available to teachers working in disadvantaged schools.
• Require schools to develop whole school literacy policies and target outcomes for class groups and individuals, and to have an in-school reporting mechanism through which teachers would report on the progress of their teaching and learning objectives.
• Provide speech and language therapy support to schools with the greatest need to address the issue of language delay among Junior and Senior Infants.
• Extend teaching hours for maths support for students with very weak mathematical skills.
• Remove the cap on English language support teachers in schools. Schools will receive a teacher allocation according to the needs of their pupils. The principal may then choose how to organise staff timetables and to recruit staff with the appropriate skills for a specific student population.
• Have the Department of Education and Science conduct a comprehensive review of the communication needs of pupils for whom English or Irish is not their first language, their schools and their parents, with a view to developing a coherent national policy framework for English language teaching and communication in schools.
• Provide appropriate funding and training for Family Literacy schemes.
• Require public libraries to increase their opening hours and to have outreach programmes aimed at maximising community literacy.
• Provide for homework clubs run by trained tutors in schools with low achievement in literacy and numeracy.
• Work with local authorities to incorporate educational facilities, such as space for homework clubs, into local authority housing developments.

School as a community resource

What Labour will do:

• Make school opening hours and the option of using schools as multiple-use facilities a condition of state funding.
• Address the insurance and staffing needs that accompany longer opening hours and multiple uses. Schools for all

What Labour will do:

Regulate schools' admission policies in line with the Education Act 1998 to ensure that schools are genuinely inclusive of special needs students.
Ensure that new and existing schools in receipt of state aid respond to the needs of a more diverse school-going population. 26 The Fair Society - Labour Manifesto 2007

World class school buildings

Under Labour, new schools will be built according to the following requirements:

• School space will be flexible enough to be able to adapt to various teaching methods, diverse uses and to variations on group sizes. For example, school space will be adaptable to PE, music or woodwork, as well as small group tutoring.
• Classrooms will be big enough to be able to move furniture easily to facilitate group work, and have enough 'free' space for unstructured play, reading, art, performing etc.
• The school grounds will be regarded as an extension of the classroom. They will be as natural as possible, and be spacious enough to house a school garden.
• All new schools will have sports facilities that will also be available to the community.
• All new schools will be low-energy, sustainable buildings.

School planning

We will give the National Treasury Management Agency the task of tracking residential development and population patterns, and of developing a model that will be able to predict when and where demographic change will lead to a demand for school places and to address the many already existing education blackspots.

The NTMA will be able to acquire land for schools using Compulsory Purchase powers.

We will future-proof new schools against the anticipated needs of communities, and allow the state to be the patron of new schools where necessary. These schools will cater for children of all denominations and of none.

All educational buildings will be zoned for educational use so that schools and educational buildings and grounds cannot easily be sold out of education.

Broadening the learning experience

Our specific commitments include:

• Progressively implementing the NCCA's proposal for a revised senior cycle curriculum.
• Enabling all schools to offer a three-year Senior Cycle at second level.
• The reform of maths and science teaching and learning as set out in our policy document 'Formula for Success'.
• Extending the use of oral skills in language examinations.
• Extending Social, Personal and Health Education to all schools. The importance of SPHE will be emphasised in the national syllabus. Teachers will undergo pre-service and in-service training in Relationships and Sexuality Education, which will include an expanded section on sexual diversity.
• Provision of funds under the school works programme to provide non-classroom learning facilities for all secondary schools or clusters of schools.
• Making PE an examinable subject at Junior and Leaving Certificate level.
• Ensuring that every second level school has their own, or access to, a qualified PE teacher.
• Enabling schools to develop partnerships with local sports clubs and organisations in order to share facilities.
• Establishing the Music Entitlement Scheme, which would entitle every child to 30 hours free music tuition in the course of one primary school year.
• Providing for artists to work with teachers and pupils on group projects for the benefit of the school or the community. The Fair Society - Labour Manifesto 2007

Caring for Young People:Special Needs and Support Services

What Labour will do:

• We will progressively increase the number of national educational psychologists to 400. These professionals will support special needs students, their teachers and their parents, but will also underpin more general school-based counselling and programmes addressing mental health among young people.
• A full-time educational psychologist will be allocated to schools on a clustering basis.
• We will ensure that the resources available to a child with special needs at primary level are also available to that child at second level in advance of the child beginning First Year.
• We recognise the success of the ABA method for many children who are on the Autistic Spectrum. We will sanction the 12 ABA schools awaiting Department recognition and engage with parental groups who are seeking to have early assessment and autism-specific methods supported by the state.
• We will integrate the wide range of agencies and bodies providing support to children and schools into a more coherent, user-friendly structure.
• Specifically to address the widespread problem of homophobic bullying in our schools, the Department of Education and Science will issue clear guidelines to schools outlining their responsibility to address homophobic bullying among students and teachers.
• We will facilitate the sharing of best practice between schools which have implemented successful policies and programmes addressing sexuality and homophobic bullying.

Learning for life

If Ireland is to prosper, and generate more and better jobs, we must invest in our people. A knowledge economy requires a skilled, flexible and adaptable workforce, based on strong educational attainment and

on-going training and skills enhancement. In modern economies, more and more people will move jobs several times in the course of a career, and re-training and up-skilling beyond the traditional education years will be essential both to enhancing productivity and to protecting the employability of individuals during those transitions.

Furthermore, we firmly believe that education and learning should also be valued for their own sake. The opportunity to learn should be flexible and open to people of all ages, backgrounds and needs, whether in work, at home or retired

Upskilling the workforce

What Labour will do:

• We commit to increasing the number of people in employment that formally progress by at least one level under the National Framework of Qualifications by 100,000 over a five-year time frame.
• Accelerate the development of a national framework of qualifications that is well understood and recognised by individuals, employers and education and training providers and that makes access, transfer and progression a reality. This requires the rapid development of a certification and accreditation system to ensure that work-place learning can be properly certified and recognised.
• Increase support for employer-led training networks, delivered through Skillnets and the enterprise development agencies. Greater support will be provided for training networks that focus on transferable skills (ICT literacy etc.) for the low-skilled.
• Re-invent the role of FÁS to achieve greater focus and efficiencies. FÁS will be given a strong mandate to expand work-training schemes and apprenticeships and to empower individuals and small businesses to access relevant training.
• Establish the right to take two weeks paid study leave from work, paid for out of the social insurance fund. 28 The Fair Society - Labour Manifesto 2007

Third and Fourth Level

We believe that in creating a knowledge economy we must also nurture the values of civic society. It is essential that we promote innovation in science and technology, but we need to do the same in the creative arts, humanities, and the social sciences. Indeed, solutions to the biggest challenges of the future, such as better education, environmental protection and urban planning, will come from disciplines other than the 'hard' sciences. We will ensure that funding for third level reflects the public good served by academic diversity.

The abolition of third level fees introduced by the Labour Party has greatly enhanced participation rates at third level. We will build on this to expand participation rates across all social groups, while working to improve the standards and consistency of education at third level.

What Labour will do:

• Fully support the development of a fourth level sector. We believe that genuine cutting-edge research achievement will require unprecedented cooperation and collaboration between institutions. Our approach to third level investment will reflect this priority.
• Reform the system for funding new higher education research infrastructure in a way that provides universities and Institutes of Technology with the opportunity to borrow to finance research infrastructure, and with the incentives to attract more ongoing research funding from industry by developing critical mass in distinctive research areas.
• We will establish a multi-campus University of the South East with Waterford Institute of Technology as its hub.
• Study the feasibility of establishing an all-Ireland university press.
• Hold a competition among universities for the part-funding of a new Institute of Advanced Studies in Applied Finance to support the further development of our international financial services industry into increasingly sophisticated activities.
• Establish a national Intellectual Property Services Centre (IPSC) to support our higher education institutes and their research teams in the creation, protection and exploitation of ideas generated from publicly funded research.
• Abolish fees for part-time students studying for their first primary degree.
• Steadfastly maintain our commitment to free third level education for all.
• Reform the student grant system to make it more transparent and equitable and progressively increase the level and income thresholds for third level grants. Responsibility for administering third level grants will be transferred to the Department of Social and Family Affairs.
• We will establish an Open University of Ireland.
• We will create an Ombudsman for third level education.
• Legislate to take effective action against bogus universities and "diploma mills". Education is about realising one's full potential, but it is also about releasing and harnessing the creative potential of society as a whole.

Further Education

What Labour will do:

• Revive the National Adult Learning Council and local co-ordinating bodies so that diverse elements of lifelong learning can be linked into one coherent system through which learners can progress.
• Make Further Education a distinct sector of the education system.
• Put in place a Council of Further Education Colleges to coordinate the activities of PLC providers.
• Provide for appropriate management structure and specialist staff for FE provision.
• Provide appropriate non-pay budgets to reflect the nature of the activity.
• Remove the arbitrary cap on PLC places. A real commitment to a knowledge economy recognises that a knowledge society needs diverse sources of education.
• Provide separate FE colleges in centres where there is a sufficient concentration of students. These buildings will be designed to meet the requirements of Further Education.
• Ensure all FE students have web access, email accounts, IT equipment and access to a library.
• Create a transparent model of mobility for students to third level where appropriate.
• Encourage the development of student unions with student representation on appropriate college decision making bodies.
• Draw together existing strands of funding into a dedicated annual budget for Women's Community Education within the Department of Education and Science.
• Through our 'open schools' policy we will support Adult Learning in primary and post-primary schools after school hours.

Adult Literacy

What Labour will do:

• Significantly increase the Adult Literacy budget in line with increased capacity among adult literacy providers.
• We will also put in place appropriate structures for the training of adult literacy tutors.
• We will initiate a mass-media adult literacy campaign, including a TV literacy programme similar to Read Write Now.

A National Education Forum

When the Labour Party was last in government, we initiated the National Education Forum. This forum provided the first significant opportunity for the major stakeholders in education to debate in public session the issues and priorities confronting all levels of education. As a direct result of this open debate, more long-overdue educational legislation was resolved upon than had been in the previous sixty years.

We believe that there is a need once more to bring the education stakeholders together in a transparent and far-ranging debate. From this we hope to make an inventory of the issues facing a much changed society before moving forward in a concerted way with an educational system which will meet the priorities and contingencies of the 21st Century.

What Labour will do:

• Establish the National Forum on Education on a permanent basis. Every seven years the forum will conduct a comprehensive review of the primary, second level, third level and life-long learning sectors of education. The process will commence with a comprehensive review, in public session, of the efficiency and effectiveness of educational policies, strategies, structure and implementation in relation to the primary sector.
• This will be followed at two-yearly intervals by a similar process for the other sectors, and when completed the cycle will recommence.