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

I thank the Senators for having scheduled this debate. As they can imagine, I am very keen to put forward the case that education is absolutely pivotal to our future challenges. This Government has set two main challenges. I think we all see two main challenges. One is how to sustain the progress to reach full employment, which is very important if we are to be able to say that every person who wants to work will be able to have access to a job that will support his or her ambition. The second is our desire to ensure that we have a fair society, in particular that we break cycles of disadvantage. If one thinks about those two goals for any length of time and steps back from them, one will see that education is pivotal to both. We cannot have a sustainable full-employment economy without massive investment in the talent that will support it. I previously had the job of Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and if one talks to any employer about the challenges they face now, it is, as they would describe it, a war for talent. They must also be drivers of innovation within their businesses. They must do things in a different way if they are to succeed in entering new markets. This is particularly so after the decision of the British people to exit the European Union, when we are now faced with the need to diversify and be innovative in our markets. We also need to be able to fill skills gaps as they emerge. We need to be able to support entrepreneurship. Two out of every three jobs come from companies within the first five years of their lives.

At the heart of an awful lot of the talent drive that fuels enterprise is the education system. Equally, if one considers the challenge of creating a fair society, anyone will see that the key to resolving cycles of disadvantage will be built around education. We have so often seen that in some schools, a teacher can predict that a certain child will not progress, that instead of progressing to higher education, a good job or an apprenticeship, he or she is destined for something different and will face into difficulties in his or her life. Education is the key that can break down those barriers and open up new opportunities. Education is the key that can help young people develop the personal resilience to deal with many of the stresses faced in later life. Education is the key to setting out pathways that allow people who perhaps did not succeed the first time around in their education to find their way back and through to traineeships, apprenticeships and so on.

Therefore, on both core objectives that we have set, education is the key. The challenge for me and others is to set out a strategic vision for the country that can win the support of our community for investment in education. That is exactly what the Action Plan for Education is all about. It has a strategic vision that, within ten years, we would become the best education service in Europe. That is a bold ambition but it is a realistic one, in my view, because across many areas, we are already very strong performers. Many rank our education system as it is among the first five or six in Europe. In areas such as literacy, we do very well but not quite so well in mathematics or science. We have the highest rate in Europe of enrolment in the so-called STEM subjects in our universities. We have the highest rate in Europe of participation in third level. We have one of the best performances in research and the capacity to turn our investment in research into genuine innovation that changes things. We are, therefore, strong in many dimensions but we are weak in many others. For example, lifelong learning is an area which we need to consider and in which we are weak. We are one of the laggards in Europe for making sure that people who are in work continually renew their skills.

We need to close the gap between disadvantaged schools and other schools but it is fair to say that the DEIS scheme has been very successful. The drop-out rate has fallen sharply. It was 32% just a few years ago, in 2001. It has now come down very significantly, despite all the difficulties, to just 18% and we need to sustain that progress. That is why we have created an Action Plan for Education. We also built on my experience in the enterprise. Education is a complex Department. It has many individual strategies, and it is very important to integrate those series of strategies around some shared goals that would apply at all levels - first, second, third and fourth levels - and would integrate the strategies to make sure we are implementing them appropriately, setting the right priorities to achieve the high goals.

The goals are ones that I hope will lend themselves to the Seanad. They are built around firstly reducing the level of disadvantage and making sure those who come to the education system with a disadvantage progress. That is measured in progression to third level or apprenticeship or traineeship, in a lower still drop-out rate and in improved relative standards in literacy and other tests compared to mainstream schools that are not in the disadvantaged programme.

The second goal concerns the enrichment of the learning experience for every pupil. Undoubtedly, everyone can recognise that as our environment becomes more complex, we need to respond with wider subject choice.It is important that we introduce coding in schools and adopt digital technology, not only to expose young people to its power but also to integrate it into teaching methodologies in order that it enlivens and enriches education and teaching methods. This is at the core of the junior certificate cycle.

We need to see a broadening of the types of skills that are recognised and valued in our education system to take the shackles off teaching and learning. We are too concentrated on the terminal examination which has been a deadening influence, particularly in some of the subjects that are important for the future, such as science. This is, appropriately, a very important second theme.

A third theme is focused on schools and ensuring we provide the supports to allow them to continuously improve. There is no doubt the key to success lies in the leadership and teaching methodologies that are applied by staff in schools and the culture that is developed. We need to invest more in building strong leadership. Initiatives are already emerging to strengthen the leadership capability of schools. This was part of the recent agreement reached between the Department and the Teachers' Union of Ireland, TUI, and Irish National Teachers' Organisation, INTO, to deliver improvements. There are many other ways in which we can support innovation in schools, including in terms of a capacity for self-evaluation and peer learning and mainstreaming what is working elsewhere.

The fourth stream we have set out is the need to build stronger links between education and the wider community. Visiting the north inner city of Dublin with the Taoiseach recently, it was clear that while children have a good and safe environment until 4 p.m., success within schools very much depends on what happens after school and what supports are available in the wider community when children go home from school. We need to find ways of building bridges with community supports such as clubs.

With regard to our desire to provide the skills and talent of the future, there is evidence to show that if students are given the opportunity to participate in a work placement during their study, they have 24% better outcomes in terms of employment and income. We must build much stronger bridges with employers. Some colleges make this a core element but it must be extended.

The relationship or partnership, if one likes, between parents and schools must be valued more. We are committed to developing a parents charter to allow this relationship to become more of a genuine partnership involving mutual respect on both sides.

As to the final element, as a national Department with a number of national agencies, we must also aspire to best international practice. We must examine whether the continuous professional development we offer teachers and our methods of inspection, support and innovation reflect international best practice. The national agencies face the challenge of ensuring they are creating the framework within which schools can achieve high levels of performance.

Criticisms have been made of the Department's approach, with some arguing that we should not set such high ambitions and that we should be content to be just good. I do not agree with that view. By saying we want to be the best in Europe, we change the conversation, the questions we ask of ourselves and our performance, whether in terms of children with a disadvantage or the range and richness of the learning environment we offer. We need to ask these questions if we are to be determined to be the stand-out, excellent choice.

The other question people have asked is what is the investment implication of the strategy. It is important to note that the strategy takes a three-year and ten-year perspective. It is not a budget plan, nor was it intended as such. It is a statement of ambition and direction. The pace with which we can implement some of the changes will depend on the additional incremental resources we can secure from year to year. However, it is equally important that our current allocation of €8.5 billion is spent to the best effect. We must examine many issues to ensure we are using all the resources allocated to us by the Houses of the Oireachtas to best effect as well as making the unanswerable case for new investment in various challenging areas, for example, special educational needs, educational disadvantage, higher education and apprenticeships. We have set out strong ambitions for the future in all these areas.

I thank Senators for initiating this debate. It is important that those of us who are interested in education - most of the Senators present have a particular knowledge, background or expertise in this field - spread the message more widely that if we want to fulfil the ambitions we have as a nation, be they economic, cultural or scientific in nature or an ambition to create a fair society, the decisions we make about our education service will be at the heart of achieving them. For these reasons, it is important to integrate this into a simple plan that one can see. This is a feature that will apply in this respect of the action plan, as it did when I had responsibilities elsewhere. There will be a fresh plan for 2017 and it will be built on the feedback from and experience of what we do in 2016. Similarly, the new plan in 2018 will be built on the experience in 2017. This approach will provide a vehicle for continually seeking to improve the instruments and policy choices we make, bearing in mind the views of the Oireachtas and education stakeholders.

I hope we, as a community, can get behind the effort to set education as one of our national priorities and ensure we make the right choices across all education sectors. We must have clear goals and commit to outcome reporting in order that the Oireachtas, as the funder of the strategy, will be able to determine whether we are living up to the outcomes we hoped to achieve in literacy progression and the roll-out of different programmes. We are happy to be held accountable against objective standards. Any investment in education, provided it is done right, will deliver the returns Members of the Oireachtas have a right to expect.