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

We need to do more of that. To pretend it is all negative is unfair. In many disadvantaged areas, teachers are putting in a massive effort. There are great success stories but we need more of them.

Senator Lynn Ruane raised a number of issues. She is correct that there is no systematic collection of data on children in care. It appears that because the children go to different schools and are not traced, we do not collect data on individual pupils and reproduce them. We do not collect data on a subset of children in care and reproduce them. We certainly do not want to isolate individual children and their data but, as the Senator says, there is a need to ascertain how we are faring in these areas.

The Cassells report deal with a considerable issue. Clearly, if my Department can assist the Senator with technical information, it will be happy to do so. Senator Lynn Ruane raised the issue of diagnostics in respect of a dysfunctional relationship to mathematics. We are moving away from diagnostics and, as such, it is no longer necessary for any reason. If a child exhibits a learning need, the school will have the capacity to deploy resource teaching to meet his or her need, including in a group setting. The Department will endeavour to support the best model in the circumstances. It is no longer necessary to produce a diagnostic label, stick it on the child's head and state this is the gateway. I hope this model will open up schools' capacity to respond to individual children.

Senator Lynn Ruane is correct that we need to invest in the capacity of teachers to deal with mental health and many other issues. I am having a hard look at the area of continuing professional development or CPD as it is known to determine whether the current approach reflects best practice. It is very much demand-led. Ambitious and committed teachers can get involved and may not then be deployed to the area in which they have acquired skills. We need to examine this issue and will try to do so in the roll-out of the junior cycle programme, a major reskilling exercise that offers an opportunity to support good practice.

Senator Ivana Bacik who has left the Chamber raised the issue of progress on the baptism barrier and diversity of schools. I will be the first to agree that we have not achieved what the two previous Ministers, Ruairí Quinn and Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, wanted to achieve. As we seek to accelerate the process, we are considering the community national school model as one which may have more capacity. It involves live transfer rather than a land transfer, which means that we would avoid the complex property issues that bogged down the amalgamation and closure approach. We hope this model can be applied. We are taking a bottom up approach by using the 16 education and training boards to identify the views of parents and their capacity to respond. They will then publish a report and, working with the patrons, identify if a live transfer can be achieved. This approach is definitely worth trying.

I recognise Senator Ivana Bacik's point that people have some misgivings about the community national school model where a break in the programme is provided for faith based education. I have suggested the way to solve this is to have a general full-year programme known as Goodness Me! Goodness You!, with parents being able to opt out of the programme to have their child prepared for First Holy Communion or another religious event or instruction. This would be a good model.

I agree that the baptism barrier, as it is known, is an obstacle in some schools, particularly in oversubscribed areas in Dublin. I have issued four options, the first of which is the Labour Party proposal to have catchment areas within which schools would only be allowed to give preference. Other options involve variants of the catchment model, namely, quotas and the nearest school rule. The fourth option is to eliminate religion completely, while seeking in some way to respect the ethos of the school. This discussion is under way.

I take Senator Gerry Horkan's point that the ideal would be to build a school for everyone. This year 20,000 new school places must be provided to accommodate the population bulge and this will absorb 80% of the Department's capital budget. I am not in a position to build new schools to meet different requirements. I must use a model under which new schools will be built in areas in which there are insufficient school places. All of the new schools will be under new non-denominational patrons. However, I am stuck with a scenario in which 96% of primary schools are denominational. We cannot start building more schools as a way of reducing this figure to 65%. We must accelerate-----