Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have the action plan for 2016 to 2019, and I took the opportunity to go through it again yesterday. I assume we cannot automatically go straight into another action plan without looking at what was achieved through this one. There is laudable and notable ambition contained within this action plan, and some very specific objectives, timelines and target indicators. Is there going to be an opportunity to go through these at another time? I do not expect anyone to go through it now, but I really believe that we have to assess where we are based on what was put in place by the previous action plan.

In terms of supporting teachers, one of the five goals we have is helping those delivering education services to continuously improve. That is incredibly important, because many teachers are suffering from low morale. Pay parity is an issue which arises quite regularly, particularly in the staff rooms of larger, newer schools, where 50% of teachers are actually on a lower pay scale. That is completely wrong.

The whole area of teaching principals must be looked at; it is something this committee looked at during our summer school session, when we discussed the possibility of allowing teaching principals one day a week in which to look after all of the administration and other areas. Principals are the leaders of education within their schools, but when their time is completely taken up with administrative work it becomes very difficult to lead.

I totally agree with what my colleagues have said about looking after staff on a whole school basis. We have to support our secretaries and caretakers. In many cases those people are the heartbeat of the school, and do so much unacknowledged work. We have to support them. Recruitment and retention is a problem, and we absolutely have to look at it.

On special needs, the adequacy of special education access and funding is hugely important. There are some very good autistic spectrum disorder, ASD, units at primary school level. I visited one recently in County Laois, outside of my area, and brought it up with the Minister on a previous occasion. Not one cent was given to that school to kit out the ASD unit, and that has to be looked at. It is also very difficult to find places for children moving from ASD units in mainstream primary schools to ASD units in mainstream secondary schools. While we have done quite a bit of work at primary level we are now reaching the stage that provision has to be made at secondary level. The question of how we progress sections of the Education of Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004 is also hugely important.

My colleagues have mentioned delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS, and I want to reiterate that I believe it is a really good programme. However, there are many children suffering from disadvantage who are in non-DEIS schools. We have to address that. We also have to address the assessment criteria used to allocate DEIS status in schools.

Equality of opportunity is of great importance across the board, including third level and access to further education for older people, in terms of enabling access to life skills. We should put a renewed focus on that.

The objectives contained in the former plan for apprenticeships, which is finishing this year, were quite ambitious, and rightly so. We have to look at expanding our capacity in terms of skills in the regions as well as nationally, and aim to have 50,000 people in apprenticeships by 2020. I am not sure we are on target to reach that. I want to make a plea to the Minister in terms of areas where apprenticeships can be accessed, including for early school leavers and others. To be parochial for a moment, there were plans afoot to set up an apprenticeship scheme to cater for young people in the old Model school in Athy, which is a blackspot for early school leavers. I would appreciate it if the Minister could look at that area in particular.