Averil Power (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy O'Sullivan and the Minister of State, Deputy English, to the committee. I wish to focus on the priorities for the budget for next year, and particularly on areas that have had a cut over the last few years. What will be the Minister's priorities if indeed the Government does have more resources in the next budget?

One of the areas that has taken a hit has been special needs education. Although the SNA cap was raised a little last year, the 85% rule for resource teachers means that the resources the children are getting are now no longer linked to their educational needs. They are being affected by an arbitrary cap. Does the Minister see this as a priority area if resources are available?

The same question applies to the National Educational Psychological Service, which is seriously under-funded. This issue has come up many times in the committee when we have had special needs groups in. Parents and schools cannot get assessments through NEPS. This creates an inequity where the only people who can get assessments are those who can afford to pay for them. If the Government has some leeway then rather than there being competition between the two parties on tax cuts, I believe we should be reversing some of the damage that has been done to the most vulnerable over the last few years, including children with special needs.

In the same vein, the slides that we were given state that the DEIS schools have been protected over the last few years from cuts, which is not the case. However, I have received correspondence yesterday from the school completion programme in Killinarden, which has taken cuts of 30% over the last few years. Is that something the Minister would revisit if resources are available next year?

On the early education side, is the Minister aware of the report on the free pre-school year and its impact in disadvantaged areas, which was published last May? The report was clear in saying that the free pre-school year has not closed the gap between children from disadvantaged areas and other children in the same age cohort. It says that there are a number of reasons for that. It is too late when a child is three or four years of age, he or she is already far behind. It is only a half intervention, a half day for some of the year, and it does not engage with families. Early education has always been the poor relation in the Minister's Department, scattered between the Department of Education and Skills and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. Sometimes it is not clear who exactly is in charge of what. It is an area to which we have never dedicated the kind of resources that we need, particularly from an early intervention point of view.

I would link that with the school completion programme and similar programmes, because the research to which I referred showed yet again that it is not just educational interventions in the schools that work in disadvantaged areas. Work with families and parents, so that they can support their children, is also needed. That is why cuts to programmes such the school completion programme, which do that type of work, are especially dangerous. They have torn away some of the improvements that had been made. I ask that the Minister makes that a priority.

Regarding the Minister's approach to the school patronage issue, this was identified as a particular priority by her predecessor when he took up the job as Minister for Education and Skills. There has been virtually no progress made. There was a report on patronage and transferring schools, and what would be done with the 1,700 schools that would remain as stand-alone schools. We have seen two or three schools change their patronage over the last few years and that is it.

There still remains an issue, on which the Minister was quoted this morning in one of the newspapers, around the teaching of religion and how we ensure that all of our schools are welcoming to children of all backgrounds and that they make appropriate provision for them. What would be the Minister's priorities in this regard? The former Minister, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, was addressing that issue by divesting off some schools, creating a situation where we have the Catholic school, the Protestant school, the Educate Together school. I believe that is going down the wrong road. It is an issue we have discussed previously in the committee. We end up with children segregated on religious grounds in a way that has not existed in the past, because the Catholic schools - notionally Catholic - had been taking children of all faiths and were doing their best. Now the teachers are working in awkward situations, such as the one produced by the rule in regard to priority given to religious education, an issue on which the Minister was quoted this morning.

I do not believe that a segregation system is the best way to proceed. We need to look at how we can take all of our existing schools and make them more welcoming and how we change the rules in regard to religious education. This was a priority for the Minister's predecessor, at least a stated priority at the start of his term. What is the current Minister's perspective on it?