Professor Aislinn O'Donnell:

I am professor of education in Maynooth university. My background is philosophy of education and I work in initial teacher education so my comments will reflect that position.

I would like to us to reflect on the nature of public education and the question of what a democratic education system might look like. I want to reflect on this under the broad banner of two headings, access and quality. We have the ambition in Ireland to widen access and participation and we have witnessed dramatic and transformative changes in the country as a consequence of changed policies with regard to education. With changing labour markets come changing patterns of engagement with education. We need to think about higher education in its broadest sense as being for everybody, at some stage and in some way during their lives if they so choose. We also need to reflect on the diverse goods that arise from educational engagement. Thinking about higher education as not only a universal aspiration but also as a universal right should frame the way in which we understand and enact our commitments to education in the 21st century. It seems fitting for a republic to have a deep understanding of what public education means and the importance of this not only for the good it contributes to the economy but also to its citizenry.

If we are to understand public education as universal education, it must be democratic education in its deepest sense. We know our grant system does not meet the living costs of our most vulnerable students. We know families are going into debt to afford to put their children or themselves through college. An education system should be judged and evaluated not just by the achievement indicators of those who are flourishing in the system but by those who are marginalised or struggling to survive, working while studying and finding it difficult to meet the cost of living. This has an impact on the quality of the student experience and embeds inequality in the system because of the different capacity for full engagement in study. We know that numbers of part-time students and mature students have declined and this affects the rich diversity of higher education institutions. Higher education institutions should reflect the diversity of our society and create enabling conditions for all students. There are, of course, private benefits to higher education, including increased personal wealth, but progressive tax systems should act to redistribute incomes in order to mitigate sharp inequalities. I am concerned by proposals that involve significant student debt, which will particularly affect lower to middle income families which have to manage that debt alongside the other debts that they will incur. There have been discussions about student debt and the implications for long-term national debt.

I will respond briefly to the question of how to communicate this to the wider public, as it has come up a few times. We need to better communicate to the wider public what it is we do in universities and the value of this. Universities create diverse goods and it is not simply about educating students. We engage in a diverse range of activities. I am not sure this is fully understood according to research taken out in respect of the Cassells report, as people did not seem to fully understand the range of activities involved with the institution of the university. Furthermore, Ireland has had an anomalous relationship with education with regard to the relations between State and church in this regard. I suggest that we have not fully reflected on what public education means and this opportunity to discuss funding is also an excellent opportunity to begin the conversation of what we understand by public education.

We could think about the UN convention on economic, social and cultural rights, which indicates that higher education should be made equally accessible to all on the basis of capacity by every appropriate means and, in particular, the progressive introduction of free education.