Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move the following Revised Estimate:

Vote 26 — Education and Skills (Revised)

That a sum not exceeding €8,204,653,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 2016, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Education and Skills, for certain services administered by that Office, and for the payments of certain grants.

It is an honour to present this Revised Estimate to the House. In normal times there would be a much more detailed debate at the education committee, allowing us to go through it line by line. Hopefully, we will be able to do that in the future. We are embarking on a period when budget formation will be much more of a collective endeavour with not just the Government deciding alone on it but with the participation of committees in defining priorities and the issues which need to be addressed. In that context, I am keen the Department of Education and Skills will work with the education committee. I welcome the appointment of Deputy Fiona O'Loughlin as chairman of the committee and look forward to working with it to ensure we have a good report of impacts, outcomes and the way moneys are spent. We will endeavour to improve the information made available to Deputies in order that they can better inform debates.

I am convinced education is crucial to our national ambition, whether it is in enterprise, a sector in which I was involved previously, in public service, community, cultural or sporting affairs. It all makes its way back to the nurturing that people get through their education years. It is a great opportunity for us to be seeking to shape and guide policy over the coming years. I have determined we will produce an education strategy statement for the next three years by 1 September. This will set out the direction and goals. I want to work in the same way that I did when I was the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, namely working with Deputies, colleagues and other wider stakeholders to look at progress we make each year and how we can better improve the impact of measures we are taking.

I have identified three core areas, reflecting the Government's theme which is to use our economic success to make life better for people. My challenge is to use our economic success to make it easier for learners and for their parents and guardians who support them. There are over 1 million full-time and 250,000 part-time learners. This is a significant number of people whose lives we can improve if we can make changes in the way the education system works. That is an ambition. On top of that, there are areas of disadvantage and we are reviewing the scheme for schools in areas of disadvantage. We are also examining special educational needs provision to ensure we support the full participation of children with special needs. I was pleased that I was able to gain Cabinet approval this week for the appointment of 860 special needs assistants, SNAs, to take up their posts in September. They will complement the 600 extra resource teachers who will also be taking up their places in September. It is good to see children with special educational needs having a much more tailored response to their needs as a result of the additional personnel we are putting into the field.

The second big theme is how we support schools to improve continually what they do. There are some fantastically well led schools doing really interesting work. In these schools, leadership is clear, the quality of teaching methodologies is good and they have the capacity to anticipate change and be innovative. These have to be valued. In this year's Estimates, there is an investment in improving school leadership. We need to build on that. One of the themes in the programme for Government is the concept of an excellence fund which would allow schools to be more innovative and to look at initiatives to improve their environment. It brings in a whole range of issues because those schools have to be able to bring their parents with them, helping them understand their plans and how they will be executed. That is a really good development upon which I want to build.

The third theme I have identified is how we build a stronger bridge between education and the workplace, be it a workplace in the public service, the community sector or in the enterprise sector. Significant benefits are to be gained if we can strengthen that bridge. Traditionally, Irish enterprise has not had the tradition of apprenticeships or traineeships which one would find in some other European countries which are exemplars of strong practice. Correspondingly, our education system has not had the privilege of enough placements of their students in a real working environment or being able to share curriculum development with the workplace. There is a win-win if we build a stronger bridge in this regard. This is one area which we will be hoping to develop through regional networks. I know Deputy Cullinane is interested in the regional aspect of this. We have the regional education structure through the education and training boards, which will be significant players in making this happen.

I thank my officials for providing the House with a rundown of the budget. It is a different type of debate than what we would usually have. There is €8.1 billion on the current side and €600 million on the capital side, with an additional €362 million coming in from the training fund. In gross terms, it represents 17% of total Government spending on the current side and 15% on the capital side. First and second level education gets the lion's share, with 77% of our current spend. Skills is relatively small at 4% of spend, a signal of the need for improvement in this sphere. Higher education gets 19% of current spend. The other large number in the budget is the 80% of our current spend on the pay side. This goes to employ close to 101,000 people in our schools and colleges who provide the underpinning of the education system.

I am glad to pay tribute to Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, my predecessor, who initiated much good work in the Department’s budget. Specifically in this year's budget, she included several improvements in the pupil-teacher ratio both at primary and secondary level. She also made provision for leadership in the school system with 250 posts freed up to allow people to devote themselves to school leadership, which is an important element as we try to implement education plans. In total, 2,250 additional teachers are being employed this September compared to last year. This is along with the SNAs coming into place.

There is a growing importance of special education in our system. We are now spending €1 billion on special education and I am keen to get the best impact from that. There are improvements proposed in this area in the way we utilise it in the schools to get the best impact for children with special educational needs.

The other area which we obviously have to pay heed to is the further and higher education sphere. I will be coming to the House soon with a report drawn up by Peter Cassells, highlighting the challenges presented to the higher education funding model we have. It is certainly different from the primary or secondary levels in that it does not have the same connection through pupil-teacher ratios, capitation payments or allocation of school investment which has prevailed in the primary and secondary area.

It is a tribute to our higher education system how it has, over the very difficult last few years, significantly enhanced the number of participants involved, even though it did so against a declining resource. Much like the health service, it has had to work in an area where it was necessary to do more with less. As we look to the future, I believe that, collectively, as a Dáil, we have to look to how we create a sustainable funding model for the higher education sector into the next decade and beyond.

The other area close to my heart is that of the further education sector. For many years, this has been a sector where perhaps we did not focus enough on quality apprenticeships linked to sustainable sectors. Apprenticeships were dominated by the construction sector which, as we all know, overheated, leading to the collapse of apprenticeships. It is good to see they are coming back but it is much more important that we also see the growth of new apprenticeships. The Department has set the objective of doubling the number of apprenticeships but also seeing 100 new areas of apprenticeship come on stream over a number of years. The first 25 have been identified and work is being put in place to develop those programmes. We need to develop a much stronger skills base. Over time, we need to see this channel gain the same sort of prestige and reputation it has in other European countries, where many people opt for an apprenticeship for the quality of the technical skills it gives them and also the avenues it leads them into, for example, into degree courses, if they so choose, or other fields of endeavour such as setting up a business. We have not had that quality channel in the past. With the revival that we now see of Irish manufacturing and with its great regional spread, there is a real opportunity for us to capitalise on that.

I was very pleased today to announce 5,700 places on Springboard, which is a very good programme that, again, was born out of the necessity of the recession. It is targeted at people who have been unemployed and need to make a career. It was inspiring today to see two stories, the first of a mother who had dropped out of the workforce and decided that her previous skills as she re-entered were not sufficient. She chose to study data analytics, a very different environment, and she has thrived and gone on to work in the Revenue Commissioners. The second story was that of a chef who had gone to Australia and then come back. He was unemployed and wanted to get away from work as a chef. He moved into the IT sector and now has an excellent job with General Motors.

Those are the sorts of stories that tell the impact of programmes like Springboard but they are also very interesting in the way they incentivise our education system to build links with enterprise. Under Springboard, the vast majority of participants have had work placements. Employers have shared in the shaping of the curriculum and, as a result, the placement rate has been extremely high at 75%. It is a model of what can be done and shows we need to build further upon it.

The other big theme is obviously the capital projects, which have a budget of €600 million. To judge from discussions with Deputies around Leinster House, it is probably the biggest element of interest with them. At present, there are 116 major projects either under construction or progressing to commence construction in 2016, which is a very important element. I know it will be of interest to Deputy Cullinane that there is an allocation of €21.5 million to the higher education sector, most of which will be spent on existing commitments such as the Glucksman Library at the University of Limerick and the Carriganore campus at Waterford Institute of Technology, as well as on expenditure in respect of Grangegorman.

I would like to thank Deputies for participating. I look forward to an engagement, not just today, but during as many years as are given to us - who knows how long at this stage? This Dáil has offered us an exciting opportunity to shape collectively the future of our education system for the next three years but also beyond that in terms of funding models that can sustain us into the longer-term future. I look forward to working with the committee, Opposition spokespersons and the wider range of Deputies, who have keen experience and can bring a lot to this debate, whether as former teachers or users of the education system. One of the things that has struck me about education is how many more stakeholders have become actively involved in seeking to shape education policy. It is a very policy-rich environment and, together, we need to make the best of the resources that, thankfully, we are seeing more of. As I said at the outset, the ambition is to use our economic success to help shape a future for young people in particular. Nowhere more than in education can we build the link between a strong economy and a fair society. I believe we can bridge those two very successfully through the models of education we develop and I look forward to doing that.

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