Education is at the core of Labour's fair society
Issued : Friday 18 May, 2007
Statement by Pat Rabbitte TD
Minister for Communications, Energy & Natural Resources
Only 40 years ago, a secondary school education was regarded as a luxury for the minority who could pay for it. When free secondary schooling was introduced in 1966, one in three children did not make it beyond primary school, and only one in five sat the Leaving Certificate.
Those who could afford it had the chance to make their own future. The rest, in the words of Donogh O'Malley, were "condemned - the great majority through no fault of their own - to be part-educated unskilled labour, always the weaker who go to the wall or unemployment or emigration."
Universal second level education revolutionized Irish society.
In the Ireland of the 1950s, there were limited opportunities for those who did not inherit property of some kind. The family farm and the family firm offered little prospect to those who were not born into the family. Free secondary school democratised opportunity, and in doing so unleashed the potential that had, in another time, been lost. And we can see the results in our economy today.
We too have a progressive vision for education. Niamh Bhreathnach, as a Labour Minister for Education in 1996, abolished fees for third level, breaking down barriers for those who had benefited from free second level education, but who had then been told that they could go no further.
She sent a clear message to all citizens: you have the right to go as far as your ability will take you, so reach for it.
That is the ideological power of universal education. It says, 'You are good enough to be here on your own merits. We believe that you have a chance.'
This is why, for Labour, education is at the core of the Fair Society. We believe that everyone deserves the chance to reach their full potential, regardless of class or income, both for their own human fulfillment, and for what that fulfillment ultimately returns to society.
Donogh O'Malley and Niamh Bhreathnach laid the foundations for free education, and we have seen how far it has brought us as a nation. Real equality in education is the next frontier in Irish education. No political party, except, predictably, the PDs, will say that they do not believe in equality. But how many are willing to put it at the core of their programme for government?
Universal pre-school education is one of my five commitments for change in this election because we in Labour believe that it is the first concrete step towards breaking the cycle of poverty and underachievement that belies the equality of opportunity on offer in our schools. Our commitment to early childhood development recognises that a child's fate is often determined even before he or she begins Junior Infants.
Educational equality should be the goal of any progressive society. Equality in education is not a trumpeting of sameness, but rather a fair acknowledgement that each child's resources has a significant bearing on their chance of success in school, and that the disparity between these resources can be immense.
The Labour Party's aim in government is to ensure that the education system of the state, paid for through common taxation, ensures equality of outcome as well as equality of provision. In other words, regardless of a child's resources or family background, he or she will have the same chance of succeeding at school as any other. The kind of inequality which makes a child of early school leavers 23 times more likely to live in poverty than a child of third level graduates is not an incentive: it is a shackle. And we believe that we can break it.
Our vision of education is one where every child is valued, and where every child's potential is nurtured. This goes beyond leveling the playing field for children of different backgrounds. It is about the experience of education.
There is astonishingly little debate about what education is for in Ireland, or what kind of young people we want our education system to produce. This is largely because our energies are often devoted to more urgent matters, such as overcrowded and crumbling school buildings, long waiting lists for a special needs assessment, and a school drop-out rate that will see 11,000 of the children who received their Junior Cert results last September leave the system within two years.
Labour in government will tackle these problems head on. We have promised to fund our schools properly, so that they don't have to rely on 'voluntary' donations from parents. We will expand the National Educational Psychologist Service so that children don't have to wait up to two years for an assessment, but also to support schools in caring for the mental health of their pupils.
We will give the National Development Finance Agency the power to acquire sites for and build schools before there is a crisis in class sizes and school places. We will focus our attention on literacy and numeracy standards - the building blocks of educational achievement.
These are the basics, and we have to get them right. However, we believe that our children deserve more than just the bare minimum.
We want to see a change in the way schools are run so that principals have more freedom to innovate, and teachers have more opportunity to refresh their teaching practice. We want to see curriculum reform at second level, recognising that education is about more than learning facts for the Leaving Certificate.
We will build schools that are child-centred, that will not need pre-fabs as soon as they are finished, and which have space for music, play, art and sport as a matter of course.
We need to be ambitious for our children. This is not simply about investment: it is about vision. It is a vision of a school system where the quality of school buildings, the encouragement we give to teaching professionals, the model of care and support offered by the state for vulnerable young people, and the substance of what is taught and learnt in and out of classrooms all reflect the central importance of education, of personal fulfillment, and of civic values that are at the core of Labour's Fair Society.
