Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations and written contributions. We do need to write a report and to direct a lot of questions to the Department of Education and Skills.

There is no excuse for reducing timetables. I am not sure who makes those decisions. Is it the schools? Where does that decision come from? We should very clearly state that no school child should have his or her timetable reduced for any reason. All children should be entitled to the same amount of time in education while in school.

The yellow flag scheme is a very good one, but it should really be in place in all schools. Perhaps Ms O'Callaghan could comment on that. Only a relatively small number of schools participate at the moment, and it is voluntary. One of the issues that arose was that some schools find ways of making Travellers feel unwelcome, even though they are not supposed to act in such a way under equality legislation. Schools should not act in this way, but they do. Perhaps there is a way of putting the principles of the yellow flag scheme into all schools and achieving that culture of inclusivity in all schools. This does not just apply to Travellers; other groups feel excluded from particular schools. We all know schools that write it into their enrolment policies even though they are not supposed to. If the witnesses have any views about how we can achieve a more inclusive culture in all of our schools I would be happy to hear them. It would address some of the issues raised by Senator Ruane around people feeling that they have to hide their identity. I support Senator Kelleher's Bill, because until everybody knows about the culture we will always have to deal with ignorant people who do not have knowledge or information about the subject.

The opportunities the witnesses have to consult on this matter and to feed into policy was raised. Many people also mentioned the implementation of policy. I believe Ms Joyce said that we have many policies but that we do not have feedback on the implementation of those policies or the information in terms of statistics. We do not have the data that the witnesses would like us to have. The national Traveller education strategy is from 2006, and I believe a review is being carried out in the Department at the moment. Have the witnesses had the opportunity to feed into that review? Mr. Collins referred to the need for a consultative advisory forum of some kind. Do the other witnesses agree with that? Would that be an ongoing engagement between the representative groups and the policy makers and those implementing those policies?

I believe Senator Ruane referred to bursaries and incentives for staying on in further and higher education. Perhaps Ms White would have a comment on further education in particular. Do we have any statistics available in that area? While we have worrying statistics in terms of transfer from primary to post-primary we also have very low statistics in terms of participation at third level. We want to see significant progress in that area, but we cannot measure that progress unless we have the statistics. Many of my questions will have to be raised by this committee elsewhere. I believe the Higher Education Authority, HEA, is supposed to be carrying out a bursary review; perhaps it will be able to provide numbers on that.