Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will briefly recapitulate on a few points from yesterday and add a few points on behalf of Deputy Smith, who could not make it along. A parents and children's schools charter is not a bad idea in principle. It is a very good idea in principle to have proper grievance procedures and transparency about the expenditure of school funds and voluntary contributions, even though, frankly, they should not exist. I will come to that point in a second. It is a good idea for people to have information and real engagement with parents in their school communities about that charter. These are all reasonable things in and of themselves.

The problem, however, is that, to my mind, much of the focus of this Bill gives the Minister the right essentially to instruct school boards and schools to do certain things. The focus seems to be all internal rather than putting a charter of rights in place for education, children and pupils in education, and their parents which puts real obligations on the Government, Department or Minister to deliver a quality education.

Many of the things this Bill seeks to do are, in fact, already mechanisms to deal with issues, such as the Teaching Council, boards of management, parent-teacher associations and so on. As I said yesterday, I would like to see a charter that essentially guarantees high-quality education and the resources necessary to deliver it for all children. That is not what this Bill is about. The fear is, therefore, that it ends up being a league table with schools competing with each other like the kind of neoliberal model we have seen in the UK. That is a concern, notwithstanding the fact the things the Bill is trying to achieve are not in themselves problematic. It could lead to that logic, however.

The charter I would like to see is one that says pupils have a right to be in a proper size class and not oversized classrooms, and a right to proper school buildings, amenities and services, special needs assistants, SNAs, when they need one, free school meals and school books and free public transport. A staff member should have the right to ongoing professional development to deal with things like difficult emotional behaviours, special needs issues and so forth. That is the sort of charter we must have.

As I and quite a few others mentioned yesterday, people should have the right not to have to fundraise to provide basic services, equipment or whatever in classrooms. A demand that really emerged very clearly from the pandemic is the right not to do stressful, archaic exams such as the leaving certificate, which put immense stress on pupils and teachers. These exams are anachronistic at a time when we should be trying to make sure everybody has a right to move on to higher and further education rather than having a gatekeeping exercise, which is essentially what the leaving certificate is. It is a one-size-fits-all exercise that does not really deal holistically with the individual abilities and differences that exist between people in education.

Those are the sorts of things we should have in a charter rather than focusing too much on the internal regime of schools. I want to get on to this particular issue because I made most of those points yesterday. This is one of the really scandalous things, although I do not know the picture all over the country. A basic ability for a school community to deliver a quality education for our children and to involve parents and so on is to have the basic building - a quality building - or to have a building at all.

It is amazing we have this system where we recognise there is a need for a school in a particular area based on census or demographic information. We have a system then for the local community to decide what type of school they will have in their area, whether it will be a Gaelscoil, an Educate Together school or another type of patronage for a particular school. We do not, however, plan to provide the location and deliver the building for that school once it is established. There are many examples of this in my area and it seems to be replicated elsewhere. It certainly seems to be the case with a number of examples Deputy Smith asked me to mention in Dublin South-Central. This may reflect the picture across the country and I suspect it does. I have heard many other Deputies speak about similar issues in their areas and refer to the number of schools that use prefabs and temporary buildings and so on or that lack recreation and sports halls, canteens, proper sports facilities, playing fields and things they need.

We need a charter that guarantees those things to all schools, schoolchildren and the parents who are fighting for the best-quality education for their children.

I will mention a few examples. St Mary's Boys National School is in my area. There is a recognised need for an autism spectrum disorder, ASD, unit in that area. A parish hall right next door to the school has been identified as suitable and the parish which owns it is willing to sell the hall to the school. The application has gone in to the Department and there has still been no decision received from the Department. There is a recognised need here and a physical building available yet an answer cannot be got from the Department about the use of this parish hall by the school for children with special needs and for other uses. Dún Laoghaire Educate Together has finally been recognised as a school after a big fight, a hard campaign and much pressure on local politicians. Eventually it was given a permanent location for the school but it is going to take another couple of years. That is a long fight followed by another couple of years before we actually get the school. Gaelscoil Laighean is in a temporary site and must fight and fight to find out which temporary site it is going to be in this year. It had to fight and fight to get a permanent site which it finally got, although interestingly it is going to come at the expense of Traveller accommodation and social housing, which is a conflict that should not happen. Obviously it meets the school's needs but nobody there has any idea when they will actually get the physical school. Sallynoggin Educate Together has now been given a temporary location. Up until a couple of weeks ago it did not even have that. Now it has been given a temporary location outside its catchment area. It is not in Sallynoggin but in Dún Laoghaire, in a building where there is no play area for the students. No permanent location for that school has been identified at all. The Red Door School is a special school that has been in temporary accommodation for more than a decade. Gaelscoil Phádraig in Ballybrack has been waiting for a permanent location for I do not know how many years now, I think it is about 12 or 13. Those are just a sample of the lack of planning and of provision for basic things like a physical location, a building or the special needs provision necessary to give the quality education we need.

Deputy Bríd Smith has asked me to mention some cases from her area. In Ballyfermot there has been amalgamation of St. John’s College, Dominican College and Caritas College. A new location has been got at the St. John’s College campus but the 1,000 male and female students there will have no gym and no canteen in an area where there is considerable disadvantage, obesity and so on. The national school at Goldenbridge in Inchicore is in a very dilapidated building in one of the poorest areas in Dublin. It is a fantastic school, where teachers and the principal are concerned, but there is serious neglect of the infrastructure that should be provided for the school. In Dublin 10 and Dublin 12 there is also desperate demand for a gaelscoil in what is a very densely populated area of the country. The community is crying out for it but for some mysterious reason the Department will not grant the area a gaelscoil.

Charters inside a school are all very well but unless we deliver the resources, buildings, facilities and the supports charters mean very little.

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