Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The top quartile of leaving certificate students are going into primary teaching, which opens considerable opportunities for young people and ensures the quality of classroom teaching remains at a high level. I am proud of that fact.

It is important for communities to continue to ensure the status of the schoolteacher is respected and that principals, as schools' leaders, are recognised as contributing to communities. This is equally true of people undertaking a higher diploma. Owing to the considerable demand, only those with honours degrees in appropriate subjects are being allowed to take higher diploma courses. This quality underpins teaching and learning, a fact that should be kept to the fore.

We must ensure proper in-service and continuous professional development. Not only do many teachers undertake these in respect of particular subjects and new curricula during school periods, they are constantly upskilling in their own time. This benefits students.

The exact level of learning in primary schools and the standards of literacy and numeracy have been questioned. This year has seen an exciting and non-pressurised development, namely, the introduction of standardised testing. Schools will introduce testing for primary school students nationally at the end of first class or the beginning of second class and at the end of fourth class or the beginning of fifth class. Teachers will be able to identify how children are doing and to use the information for each child's benefit. Teachers will also be able to give the information to parents so that they can understand how their children are doing. It will not be done in a way that will give rise to league tables as there is no question of gathering the information to ensure local newspapers know which children are doing best in which schools.

It is intended that teachers and parents will be part of children's educations. Focused information will be available in respect of disadvantaged schools. We need to know that the money targeted via DEIS — €750 million is a great deal of money — at disadvantaged young people is yielding the basic required results, namely, literacy and numeracy.

Over the years, we have recognised that schools alone cannot solve educational disadvantage, for which reason DEIS and the like include family literacy programmes, provide home-school liaisons, link with wider communities and ensure families are involved. Library projects and the expansion of the parent room initiative in schools are essential. For example, Reading Recovery and Maths Recovery are having real impacts because they are targeted one-to-one programmes. We look forward to seeing similar results. Standardised testing will provide an overview of how children are doing.

We continue to do well internationally and we are looking forward to the next PISA results which are due in December. PISA is an OECD study of maths, science, literacy and how young people are doing. In that regard, the Council of Ministers meeting last week was presented with the figures from comparative studies of each country. We are well up the table on literacy, retention and participation in third level education. On the one hand some will claim we spend less than other OECD countries but on the other the way in which moneys are spent is more targeted. We spend more on our teachers than other OECD countries. It is targeted properly to ensure high quality teaching and learning.

Up to 55% of leaving certificate students go on to third level education, a massive participation rate. The creation of 45,000 additional places in the third level sector over the past several years has opened up many opportunities for young people. If further education is included, seven out of ten students doing the leaving certificate this year will go on to further and higher education. There is no excuse for people as the opportunities are there for them. We must encourage them along the way and people from the more disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds who traditionally might not have participated in third level education.

The participation figures for lifelong learning are equally encouraging. Up to 40,000 people are involved in adult education. Many of them are in adult literacy courses. People are breaking down barriers for themselves and have the courage to admit they did not have the opportunity to learn to read and write but they will now take it.

While we are fortunate in what is happening in our education system, we must recognise the challenges ahead. The birth rate is rising and the number of newcomers into the country on a daily basis means the population is growing. We have 4,000 schools, 7 universities, institutes of technology, training colleges, a Garda college and people doing apprenticeships. Just keeping that show on the road is a huge commitment from the taxpayer. This year's education budget is €9 billion, all of it well spent.

Even with that spend, there are challenges with the integration of young people, ensuring young people with special educational needs get the opportunity to reach their potential and ensuring basic facilities and schools for them, particularly in fast-growing population centres. The curriculum must adapt and evolve to ensure we are creating the types of people mentioned by Senator O'Toole and IBEC. One of the values of our education system is that it is broad-based and we do not allow students to focus too early.

This year €540 million will solely be spent on schools. This year alone up to 1,200 schools have school building projects which will create facilities for 17,000 additional students in classrooms. We are meeting this challenge and it is not fair to say the Department failed in this provision. Some 15,000 additional children came into our schools this year. We got it right for 14,950 of them. It is not fair to say that in an area with much movement of young people the system failed. There was a time when houses were built and one could anticipate the need for a school in five years. Instead whole families are moving out of Dublin city to Wexford, Kildare, Meath and north county Dublin looking for spaces in classrooms in junior infants, first class and fourth class.

The Department has good working relationships with local authorities. I recently met with Fingal, Westmeath and Kildare local authorities, setting out the Department's needs for next year and the future and how we want the development of schools to go in tandem with new housing estates. We had a good meeting with the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to examine what legislative changes may be needed to ensure proper planning for facilities in tandem with new housing in the interests of communities.

School buildings design is not only green — they have been recommended for green awards — but, particularly in the Fingal local authority area, it allows them to be used by local communities because they have enhanced PE and meeting room facilities. Compulsory purchases are being examined but it must be remembered that it may not be cheaper and can be a long process. We are at the stage where we have an immediate need for sites for schools. This must be the priority for the building programme for the next year. Thousands of schools have great expectations for accommodation but my priority must be to provide schools in areas where there are children but no schools.

We want proud and confident young people who are adaptable and flexible to the changing circumstances they find themselves in and caring and kind members of society. Our broad curriculum achieves this. Senator O'Toole was probably part of the formation of the new curriculum which is being rolled out in our primary schools. On top of the broad curriculum, there are subjects at second level, such as CSPE and SPHE, referred to by Senator O'Reilly, which are critically important in the overall holistic development of the young person.

Along with curriculum subjects, the junior certificate programme and the applied leaving certificate, which is opening doors to young people of various different backgrounds and abilities, I would place as much emphasis on extra-curricular activities. That is where the grinds schools lose out. The grinds schools focus solely on academic achievement, which is important in an education system. So too, however, is participation in sport, music, work experience, social work and the other elements that go to make wholly rounded people.