Seanad debates

Wednesday, 11 July 2018

Traveller Culture and History in Education Bill 2018: Second Stage (Resumed)

 

10:30 am

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

I welcome the opportunity for this important debate. I will not oppose the legislation.

The decision by the former Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, in 2017 to recognise the ethnicity of the Traveller community was a significant milestone. We in government and the Oireachtas must see that the vision underpinning it is realised. This legislation is proposed very much in that spirit.

I draw Senators' attention to the National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy 2017-2021, which is being implemented by the Minister of State, Deputy Stanton. It contains 149 actions across ten distinctive themes, including education. Some of them are worth recalling, given that they are works in progress. For example, action No. 4 calls for "collaboration with Traveller and Roma organisations to develop education resources on Traveller and Roma culture and history for use in primary, post primary and adult education settings." Under action No. 10, it commits to "early intervention education welfare supports to promote and support Traveller and Roma attendance, participation and engagement with the education system and retention to the Leaving Certificate or equivalent." Under action No. 16, my Department will "review policy on admissions to school in line with the Programme for Government" to take account of possible discrimination in admission policies. Under action No. 17, it commits to implementing "community-based supports to assist retention of Traveller and Roma children in the education system." While not in any way denigrating the legislation before us, 149 actions across ten realms of government are being implemented. It is important that we deliver them and ensure that the work being co-ordinated by the Minister of State has the full support of the Oireachtas. There must also be pressure from the Oireachtas to ensure that we deliver on these actions in a timely manner.

Given that it is a view expressed by every Senator in the context of this debate, it does not need repeating that there is scope and a need for major improvement in education. Thankfully, we are in a post-crash Ireland and have created a solid foundation on which to plan for the future. We are doing so, taking ten-year perspectives across a range of important infrastructural and social needs. This issue equally needs that long-term approach.

The Bill deals mainly with the curriculum. I examined the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, guidelines for primary and post-primary schools. They date back to 2005 or 2006, so they are old, but they also give us insight into the nature of the problems we are trying to address, as they discuss how indirect discrimination can arise in a range of areas, including entry criteria and the way in which schools develop their service provision, policies and approaches, which can act as barriers. Also covered are the lack of professional expertise within the school to deal with some of the challenges of inclusion, the lack of systematic data gathering on the impact of policies on minority groups, and the lack of workable facilities for consultation with and listening to minority groups, be they parents or students.

One of the lessons that has to be recognised is that this issue is deep-seated. It is not just a question of writing legislation and, hey presto, the issue being solved. Legislation may hold an important role, but a great deal of work will be needed to build the underpinning and foundation for systematic change.

To be fair to my Department and the authors of the inclusion strategy, a number of important vehicles are in development or already in place. Last night, the Dáil passed the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill 2016, which outlaws for the first time discrimination. Every admission policy of every school in the country will have to have written into it a policy of no discrimination on any ground, including on grounds of being from the Traveller or Roma ethnic group. The legislation also does away with waiting lists, which have been a way for communities to create a barrier against those who are not in stable environments, meaning they could have been on lists for a long time. It gives Tusla the power to require a school to take children where the school might not otherwise do so. The Bill is an important vehicle and it was crucial that we got support.

Also in development is a parents and students charter, which has been accepted by the Oireachtas committee. It embraces students and parents as key players who need to be listened to, which is an area in which we have perceived weaknesses.We have a well-being programme which is being rolled out at junior cycle but which will also become a policy of every school when we publish a well-being policy statement very shortly. It deals very explicitly with some of the issues that have been addressed here, such as the resilience of students, their capacity to integrate, the way in which anti-bullying policies are rolled out, and the relationships that teachers build with individual students so that they have the confidence to stay within the school. As Senator McDowell described it, school should be a warm place to be for any student, regardless of their background. That is at the heart of what the well-being strategy is about, and there will be very detailed implementation to ensure that we support children, particularly children who are at risk of dropping out.

The other thing that is worth bearing in mind is that over recent years, and it predates my time, the Department has moved away from the policies of separate arrangements, like visiting teachers and segregated approaches, and I believe it has done this with general support from the broader community, the Traveller community and the wider education bodies. Segregation is not the way to deal with this. We need to have integration. If integration is to succeed, we need to have much better approaches than we have in place. Senator Kelleher referred to the numbers, and I was looking at the ESRI report which bears out the numbers for people who have left. They are 2011 data and it is people over the age of 25 back in 2011, so it is somewhat old in terms of the data. They show the remarkable and dramatic differences in the experience of people who have left school, both Travellers and non-Travellers. Those who have left school early with only primary education or less make up 78% among the Traveller community and 10% among the settled community. Even now, the numbers in the national strategy show that the percentages completing second level are 13% versus 92%, which are the current data. For those going to third level, the percentages are 1% among the Traveller community versus 66% among the wider community. We have a huge gulf to make up.

Looking at some of the material that has been in place, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, guidelines are good and they address many of the issues, but we have 4,000 different schools. The big question is to what extent schools are implementing these policies. There are some good resources available that can enliven the curriculum and make sure that it recognises the Traveller contribution to our culture and way of life. There are some excellent practices where schools are very good at doing this, there are some excellent teachers, and indeed there are some good networks for sharing good practice. The overall picture, however, would be one of this not being sufficiently prevalent across the education system generally.

I intend, on foot of this legislation, to get the NCCA to audit the whole realm of this, not just the curricular content but the quality of teaching and resources and the extent to which it is being implemented. We need to identify the weaknesses in the curricular content. We need to identify the weaknesses in what the jargon in the Department describes as CPD, continuing professional development, which is the upskilling of teachers to teach in this area. We need to ensure that our inspectorate, which is ultimately the way in which we implement quality control across the system, and not always through the traditional cigire with the red pencil saying one is wrong but supporting good practice as well as correcting poor, is very alive to the need to ensure good practice in this area.

We also need to develop much more local innovation. Integration is the right approach to take but it will only succeed if we have tailored interventions to support Traveller children. I know that, across the three Departments, predominantly Justice and Equality, Children and Youth Affairs and ourselves, a pilot scheme is being developed which I understand will go live this coming school year. It is designed to look at how we strengthen the support for children from the Traveller community attending and staying in school. It will not only have the normal interventions of the home school community liaison but will also work with the Traveller community itself and with schools. It will be tested in pilot areas to see how we shift the practice in schools on the ground, because we need to shift practice as well as pass legislation at this level.

We could pass legislation of this nature and nothing would change. We all know that. Such legislation has been passed. If it is not supported by the sort of work that I am going to put in place in terms of the audit, the identification of weaknesses, the piloting and, following that, the mainstreaming of interventions that can correct this, we will not succeed.

The other dimension of this, and Senators have referred to this, is that it is not just about ensuring that schools are more welcoming and that we get better school attendance, but about shifting the understanding of the Traveller community within the wider community. We need to ensure that people are welcomed on a broader base, and education is a place where that can happen. That shows the importance of Senator Kelleher's ideas of having content within our curriculum that embraces the Traveller community. We need to have that developed and used. There are many opportunities for doing that and doing it better.

The one quibble I would have with the legislation, and it was picked up in Senator Conway's comment, is that curriculum in Ireland is not developed by the Minister making a fiat that, as and from tomorrow, this is the way curriculum is going to be taught. For many good reasons, we have developed a stakeholder approach, led by the NCCA, which works with others to ensure that the curriculum is developed in a way that is implemented, embraced, delivered and bought into across all 4,000 schools. It is not a ministerial fiat that changes things by a stroke, nor is it for the Oireachtas to try to specify what goes into the curriculum. Broad-brush principles of what should be included are fine, but we should refrain from getting into very precise specification of curricula if that is what was intended. I do not believe that this is inherent in the Bill, but when we come to look at this on Committee Stage, I would say that my Department will be urging the Oireachtas to be careful about seeking to create a legislative straitjacket that prevents the sort of innovative thinking and flexible application that the best education systems have.

I have aspired as Minister in the Department that by 2026 - it was ten years away, it is getting closer - we would have the best education and training system in Europe. Those who would have leadership positions, such as those in Finland, for instance, are characterised by a looser, less prescriptive approach, but they still ensure, nonetheless, that high standards are delivered and that people use that scope for innovation and not to exclude people but to best accommodate the children for whom they are catering.That is the one thing I would warn against. I employ more than 100,000 people in the school system. We have phenomenal stakeholders such as teachers' unions, the NCCA and the National Educational Psychological Service. We have many good players and for us to succeed in respect of our ambition in this area, we need have them supporting the capacity of schools to do it so we do need that way of evolving policy that is consultative as well as the Oireachtas signalling what it is. I think it is a shared desire in this House that we get a better approach. We cannot tolerate the continuation of those sort of numbers - 13% completing second level and 1% completing third level. They are not acceptable in any society that has just taken the significant step of recognising an important part of our culture and heritage.

In not opposing this Bill, I hope that Senators will work with the Department and me to evolve much better and much more effective policies and to work with the Traveller and Roma communities to implement those changes. There is an appetite there and there is a lot of goodwill. There is a huge number of Departments that are obliged to put their shoulders to the wheel. We in the Oireachtas can seek to ensure that this impetus is maintained as we develop this. I thank the Senators for the debate, which has been very interesting and well informed. From the presence in the Public Gallery, clearly, there is a lot of support for and interest in seeing us make progress in this area. We will not be opposing this legislation.

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