Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I welcome the Minister and the opportunity to comment on this report. I fundamentally disagree with the Minister's view that it was unfair and ungrounded to suggest this was a diversion from other issues. I firmly believe it was and I hope I can prove that to be the case.

The issues not in the report raise questions. The two previous speakers from both sides of the House mentioned some of the issues and I will not repeat all of them. However, the Minister cannot ignore the points made very diligently by two professional people. Why did the Department choose not to tell us the class size in which these student were teaching? She had that information but somebody chose not to report it. Surely it was unfair not to deal with it and that is grounds for suspicion. The report is misleading and flawed. Perhaps the Minister has not been told some of the background but this sent a ripple through the political and education system last week. Questions of genuine concern were raised in the House. My colleague, Senator Quinn, raised one such question, while Senator Jim Walsh went so far as to say there were teachers in every school in Ireland who had chosen the wrong career path, although I would like to hear him back that up. That is how far the matter went in two days.

I wish to make it clear how the sample was selected. Some 143 people were selected, a large enough sample if properly collected. The sample was put together on the direction of the Department, which should not have been the case. I thought there might have been practical reasons for this until I discovered that over the past couple of years the colleges of education have selected and asked the Department to accept a random selection representative of students but it refused to do so. Surely that is unfair. This report reflects badly on students who hope to be probated by the same people who compiled this report and on colleges of education which are dependent on the Minister to give them a grant for the next building. Consequently, the only people who can speak freely on it are Members of this House. There is something wrong with that and I am very upset by it.

According to this report, 3% of the students should not have been in classrooms. Should somebody not have asked how many finished up in classrooms? It took me ten minutes to find out the failure rate in teaching practice in the colleges. I worked out that probably none of these students ever got to a classroom. Would it not have been important at least to have looked at that issue or to have presented that possibility to people reading this report? There is a 2% failure rate which, out of the number of students selected, would give one almost precisely the 3% figure in the report. That is despite the fact that 85% of students in the colleges are A or B level students and the Department and the inspectorate know this. A random sample should have reflected that. However, the Department insisted on three one thirds. If students had been selected at random, 113 students selected would have been A or B level students and one could not possibly have got these skewed results. This is wrong.

While the damage has been done, I would like the report rewritten and the additional information, about which I spoke, included in it. I very much support the idea of a monitoring system but why did we not see a report last week in regard to what is happening at post primary level? I would have to come to the conclusion that there is no action in regard to class size at that level at present and no need for a distraction. That is another reason I came to the conclusion I did — rightly or wrongly. At least one can see there is a logical process to my thinking.

What happened to these students assessed in the classroom? In some of the colleges, they received ten months of further study dealing with the issues before they got to a classroom. If these students were so bad, what happened to them when they went into the classrooms? These selfsame inspectors who wrote this report met them in the classroom and very unfairly applied the same criteria as they did originally. It is completely skewed to use the same criteria to assess student teachers as one would use to assess teachers. One would not do that to doctors or to anybody else. That was wrong and very flawed by any standard.

The students were met by these selfsame inspectors. It took me five minutes to find out that 95% of that cohort of teachers were probated by the same inspectors in their first year of teaching. Perhaps half the remaining 5% were people whom the inspector did not have a chance to inspect. That would mean that approximately 2% only were not probated in their first year. As far as I know, they were all probated in their second year, although I cannot be sure about that because I did not get the information. One can see why we are deeply suspicious about this.

This information did not come out in the report. On four occasions, the Minister mentioned her commitment to information. We did not have the information and had to look for it. That information, which is germane to our discussion, was not available to enable us to give a fair reflection of what the students and colleges are doing. I would be the first to support the Minister if she found something in the education system which needed to be corrected. If this report had revealed something which needed to be corrected I would have stood by her, but it revealed nothing.

The Minister raised a valid point about the percentage between liberal arts and education subjects in the colleges. As we know, it varies between 40% to 60% or two thirds to one third. A critical mass of knowledge and academic subject study as opposed to education study are required by teachers to give them confidence and understanding. The Minister cannot change that critical mass. It has to be there. There is only one way to have the balance which the Minister discussed and it is an easy bit of maths. It is a four year course.

I cannot sit here and listen to the Minister discussing a reduction in the standard of academic study. I do not want teachers to be less academically advanced. I could not live with it. Allow them to reach the same level but give them a fourth year and they will have everything. It would provide more education time with which I agree. I am sure the Minister knows I supported a fourth year for many years and did so at a time when many of those in favour of it now were opposed to it. I always thought it was important and had to be done.

Teachers state the students in the report were in classes of more than 30 and 85% of them were in classes greater than what was promised when they started in their colleges of education. These are realities. I am not making this up. It is what teachers state and it is why people jump to conclusions. It would be helpful if the Minister simply took the report back and rewrote it to provide all the information. I support the idea of this being done every year. In future, a commitment should be given that it will be done through a properly randomised sample.

The Minister may not be told that the Department of Finance is always critical of the fact that 85% of students graduate from colleges of education with honours degrees and it costs the State money. The same people who make this statement then turn around and state somehow there is a problem with teachers going into classrooms. If there is a problem let us deal with it. However, the report does not indicate a problem.

The report is demoralising for young teachers and the colleges of education and it undermines the trust and confidence of politicians. During the past week, I spoke to people here from both sides who asked me about the report with a genuine interest. They wanted to know what it is about and how bad it is. They were concerned, apart from Senator Jim Walsh who was ready to use the opportunity to have a go at teachers.