Peter Kelly (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

The Education (Amendment) Bill will pave the way for the involvement of vocational education committees in primary education, create a welcome community national school model and make a number of other notable changes to the Education and Teaching Council Acts. The Bill provides for a legislative framework to allow VECs to become involved in the provision of primary education.

As the Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills stated when she published the Bill, the changing shape of our society in recent years has placed new demands on our education system to become more diverse. Government policy in recent years has been to provide for a plurality of patronage in our education system. Our system of patronage to date has shown it has the capacity to change. It has already supported the establishment of schools by An Foras Pátrúnachta and Educate Together. Since 1997, 170 new schools have opened. While 29 of them were catholic schools, the majority were opened onto an alternative system of patronage under Educate Together and An Foras Pátrúnachta.

The Educate Together movement has established many schools and now has 56 schools, of which two opened in September. Furthermore, two schools under a pilot community national school model opened in Dublin in 2008 and a further three opened in September this year in counties Dublin, Kildare and Meath. As well as diversity by type of religion or ethos, the number of Gaelscoileanna is also increasing, with 138 such schools in place. While the Catholic Church still controls 90% of schools in the primary school sector, progress clearly has been made in providing greater choice for parents.

I welcome the VEC community national school model. The VECs have already proved themselves to be extremely successful at secondary level and there is no reason the State should not become involved at primary level and achieve the same success. This new model will welcome and respect children of all faiths and can only benefit local communities. However, it must not replace existing models of patronage but instead complement other patrons.

The Bill also provides that boards of management of schools under the new patronage model will operate in the same way as boards of management in primary schools generally, rather than on the governance model used in post-primary VEC schools. The board of management of a school established under this legislation will not be a sub-committee of a VEC, as is the case for post-primary VEC schools. This means that teaching and non-teaching staff will be employed by the board of management in the same way as in other primary schools and the board will receive capitation and other funding directly from the Department.

One of the most controversial elements in the Bill and one on which I have received a number of queries is the section that proposes to amend section 30 of the Teaching Council Act 2001. The Bill provides for the employment in certain exceptional and limited circumstances of persons who are not registered teachers, following consultations with management, unions and the Teaching Council. According to the Tánaiste, it is not always possible for students to engage a registered, qualified teacher due to many factors. As she explained in her speech to the Dáil yesterday, this amendment will allow the Minister to regulate in a measured way the use of unregistered teachers in exceptional and limited circumstances where their use may be necessary. To date, the use of unqualified personnel has been unregulated and this amendment to the Teaching Council Act seeks to amend the position. While I welcome the Tánaiste's explanation in this regard, I believe this issue must be debated further as it has caused much confusion for qualified and registered teachers who are unemployed at present.

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