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

I thank the 12 Senators who took part in the debate. They made some very interesting contributions. I was somewhat puzzled by Senator Gallagher saying he saw some regressive effect on disadvantaged learners. One of our objectives in the plan was to increase the performance and the focus on disadvantaged learners. One of the features of the resource model, with which he seems to be uneasy, is that it puts a much greater emphasis on disadvantaged children because it ties the provision of teaching much more closely with the educational need of the individual child. That is one of the features of the resource model. While people can argue about it, it has been piloted with considerable success.

I take the Senator’s point about not having languages in primary schools. A pilot carried out a few years ago was not extended owing to financial pressure and other reasons. In secondary schools, there is a high participation and approximately 80% of students take a language at leaving certificate but we do not achieve high language competence, which indicates that something is falling through the cracks. Many students do languages at third level and do the Erasmus programme but we still do not achieve. We are working on a language strategy to try to address some of those issues.

It is not true to say that we have ignored higher level. We have the same ambition for higher level as we do for the others - to improve the learning and teaching, to see more disadvantaged children coming through higher education and to see better connections into the community and into enterprises. We are bringing the Cassels report to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education and Skills where we hope everyone will take a view as to how we fund third level education. It puts up the fundamental choices there. Peter Cassels has taken a 15-year perspective. We need an honest debate on how we fund it. Some people might say they do not like any of his proposals but if we do not have any of them, we cannot fulfil our ambition. I am interested in engaging in that debate and hopefully together we can frame a longer-term perspective.

I do not agree with the Senator that we should abandon the junior certificate award model that has been the basis of teaching in recent years in English and now moving into science and business. It has three strands. It has the conventional exam, to which 90% is allocated; a student written project, again tested independently by the examination board for which there is 10%; and a junior certificate achievement certification of the range of things the pupil did within the different curricula headings. That is a very good model. Unfortunately, the ASTI has decided it will not engage with it but that is the model of the junior certificate that is in place.I ask the Senators as well as others to appeal to the ASTI. We have asked it to suspend its directive in respect of English and to allow that to go ahead and for the pupils to be able to do that. The new junior certificate is the way to go. I went out to Adamstown to see the new science, business and coding. That is happening in schools which are adopting the new junior certificate and it is revolutionary. It is a much better model for teaching and learning. It has been good for the teachers and for the students. We need to stick with the approach that has been put in place and not seek to unravel it simply because there has been some pressure. I do not agree with that.

Senator Maria Byrne raised the issue of new schools coming into the DEIS programme. That will be a feature of the plan that we hope to produce by the end of the year. It will introduce a metric model that is much more independent and based on statistical rather than on random returns that principals had to put together. This will be based on Central Statistics Office data from the census. It will be a robust model and will give those that have not been able to participate since 2009 a chance to do so. I welcome Senator's emphasis on preschool level. We are trying, through Aistear and Síolta, to bring forward a good curriculum and standards. Returning to what Senator Paul Daly said, it is very much at that earlier point that we have to intervene if we want to shape our education system.

Senator Gavan started off excellently and I thought we were going to have a real engagement about where our education system could go but he seemed to then turn to a prepared script that went back into a very partisan model of discussion. I like a good debate in this House and I would give the following advice. I am a former Member of this House and there is much more open debate in it and, to some degree, Members leave their party tags behind them and try to engage. That is one of the reasons I like coming to the Seanad because it engages at that level in terms of identifying what the problems are and how they can be solved. Some of the what the Senator's scriptwriter wrote for him is simply untrue. We have increased the number of resource teachers by 41% since 2011, which represents a huge investment. We have also increased the number of special needs assistants, SNAs, by 22%, which represents huge investment going into special education. We are making a big effort to meet what Senator Dolan called for in terms of improving the outcomes for and investment in children with special educational needs.

We have already increased the number of apprenticeships by 2,000 and our plan is to have another 4,000. We want not only to work in the traditional apprenticeships area but to move from the existing 27 up to 100, bringing in, as we did last week in Sligo, the first of the new model in insurance. There is a huge role for apprenticeships and I am very committed to it. We have lacked in our model in Ireland a stream for training and apprenticeship that would be of equal status with higher education. That has been a huge gap in our model. Germany and other European countries have a much stronger stream of apprenticeships with routes into further education in that if one wants to do a degree afterwards, one can. I visited Liebherr, a German company, in Killarney and it made the point, which I thought was very revealing, that more of its intake as apprentices reach high executive positions and high pay than their intake of graduates. It is an interesting revelation. If we get the model right, it has a very fulfilling outcome and very often will bring in people who otherwise would not have got to third level.

I do not agree with Senator Dolan that there is not an ambition in the strategy for special education. The second goal outlined in it refers to children with special educational needs and children at a disadvantage. Addressing provision for that area is a core goal of this strategy. We are investing in this area. I will be looking to see better indicators of outcomes for children with a disability to see that we are doing it in the best possible way. As we move to roll out the new resource teaching model, it will involve more investment but I believe it is a better model. It is the whole school model, it does not solely focus on a special need assessment of a child and is not time-resourced. It puts an obligation on the whole school to accommodate the child with special educational needs and it also gets away from the point the Senator rightly made in his comments, that some parents do not have the same access to get an assessment. We have become too reliant on these assessments and we need to move to a different model. That is what this new model, designed under the leadership of Mr. Eamon Stack of the National Council for Special Education, will do, and it is being piloted. The pilot project has had widespread support, notwithstanding some of the concerns that Senator Gallagher expressed. Change will not always be welcomed by everyone but this new model is the right way to go and I hope we can do that. I would like to see more capacity to understand the impact in this area and progression to jobs and other ways to progress, as the Senator mentioned. We need to put more work into understanding that impact.

I take the point the Senator raised regarding whether there is an omission with respect to the UN convention, to which we are committed. I was looked at it online and I do not believe there is anything we are seeking to do that in any way would be in contradiction of it, or that we have missed out on something, but we will look at it to make sure that there is not.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins raised the DEIS review. We hope to have that by the end of the year. As Senator Maria Byrne said, it will examine schools that have been excluded. It will also consider if there are better models, if we can have different approaches, if we can support leadership within the DEIS schools, if we can look at clusters working together to do things and if we can build greater links into the wider community. We may have to pursue it by way of pilot projects and testing to see what works and what does not work, rather than taking a big bang approach and everything being resolved. The DEIS programme is very much like a cliff, one is either on it or one falls off the edge and is completely out. We want to soften that cliff relating to need. The resource model, if it goes through, will be a very significant player in terms of helping children in disadvantaged schools and children who are in the education system.

A report on lone parents is in preparation. It is recognised that there is an issue there. The publication of that report has been delayed through extra work that has to be done but it is progressing. I take the Senator Higgins's point that gender progression should be a key part of our higher education strategy. I thought it was and I have to check that but I thought in the context of the framework of performance we have that one of elements is progression and gender progression in particular, as well as the areas of disadvantage and disabilities are a part of that. If it is not, we will certainly look at that. Only this morning I launched an initiative with I Wish, a Cork based organisation originally, which is now going to be run nationwide. Cork always teaches us things. It is an initiative to encourage transition year, TY, girls to take up science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, opportunities, which is a huge issue if we want to see more women crack the global challenges that we face. There is encouragement to participate.

Senator Higgins raised the pay for newly qualified teachers. I am delighted that we secured an agreement with the INTO and TUI on that front. It is a progressive move. Senator Buttimer asked if we can reach an agreement with the ASTI. My door is open for its members to get a similar deal that would resolve these issues but they have unilaterally decided to withdraw Croke Park hours and they have also now decided to ballot for industrial action. I would like to see it set aside that withdrawal of Croke Park hours and get what are real genuine improvements for its members, namely, the substitution payment, the payment for newly qualified teachers, flexibility on Croke Park hours and greater flexibility on getting permanency, which is something all young teachers have rightly felt need for progress on.

Senator Joe O'Reilly and others raised the importance of leadership and middle management, which was a big victim in the crash years. I would like to see that rebuilt, and it is part of the agreement with the TUI and the INTO, but we need to look at a middle management structure for a decade's time, what it would look like, what skills it would involve, what functions would be done and what leadership model should occur in the schools. It is not simply about returning to the posts and so on that we had in the past but designing a good quality leadership structure within our schools.

School meals are important. Senator O'Reilly raised the issue of young people at risk who may become alienated from the school culture and if we can we bring them back to it.I hope the junior certificate will engender less alienation because it is more practical but I also believe, as does Senator Reilly, that we need a bigger range of options to give people a second chance and to allow them to come back in. There are a number of programmes out there like Youthreach, VTOS and the community training centres and they can merge into traineeships and apprenticeships, but we must be very alert. It is not a case of one chance and all the doors close, which has been too big a part of our model for many years. There is a greater understanding of that.

Senator Ó Ríordáin has very big ambitions. I am criticised for having the modest ambition to be the best in Europe. The Senator has big ambitions to eliminate illiteracy. From my time in education in the past, I know that this has proved very difficult. Every country in the world struggles with people with low levels of literacy but we need to steadily improve and that is what I am doing. It is a bit like the Kerry man - if one wants to achieve some of these things, one would not start out from here. Unfortunately, in practical terms, I must start with what I find.

The same is true of his ambition in respect of patronage. One could argue that a republic should have no patrons, be they denominational or non-denominational, but the reality is that we have a patronage model. Not only that, but we have a Constitution that protects the rights of those patrons to run those schools and disallows the State from discriminating between them.