Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte arís roimh an Aire. It is important to recognise that to most schools a student charter is nothing new and the substance of what is being proposed is happening in practice without any State intervention. There is certainly something to be said for codifying the practice across all schools to ensure best practice. We need to ensure that we are doing this in a way that respects the rights of students and parents while not impinging on the independence of schools and their ability to administer their own affairs as well. It is reasonable to seek that balance in any measure coming from the State at this time.

The Long Title makes it clear on whom the Bill places obligations and who is to benefit when it states: "An Act to require the boards of management of schools to prepare, publish and implement charters for students and parents". The Bill gives the Minister the power to direct school boards to comply with the guidelines issued by him. It is important to acknowledge a number of aspects of boards of management. I am an interested party, because I am chairman of a board of management at a primary school in Galway, where I live. These are entirely voluntary bodies that engage in tremendous work across the country. In the Catholic school sector, at least 20,000 people serve on boards of management alone and these people receive no pay or expenses of any kind and their only interest is that the school operates efficiently for the benefit of children and the community. They deserve credit for the work they are doing and the public service they are involved in delivering. We need to acknowledge as well the excellent job that schools and teachers do generally and the fact that the vast majority of parents are happy with their performance. We always need to be sensitive to any suggestion that this Bill is needed because boards of management are somehow being negligent in the way they currently do their business. That is not true in the vast majority of cases.

I have spoken many times in the House about rights and responsibilities and how they should go together where there is a quid pro quo, and that mutuality should always guide policymakers and those who shape and frame legislation. One of my concerns about this Bill is that it seems keen to impose significant obligations on boards of management, without also having expectations or expressing expectations of student, parents and the wider school community. It confers significant rights on students and parents in respect of access to information and so forth from school authorities. What responsibilities does it attempt to confer on parents or students or does it attempt to reference? What additional buy-in is expected of parents, in particular, in return for this? The Minister might usefully address this and I would be grateful if he would because it was not evident to me from reading the Bill.

Aspects of the general scheme cause me some concern but appear to have been addressed in the drafting of the Bill itself. For example, the scheme states charters will include details of the service the school will provide. I know I used the phrase "public service" earlier but it is inappropriate to refer to schools providing a service, as if it were a business of some kind, and I am glad that sort of language has not made it through to the Bill. Schools are not businesses or service providers, although a service is involved and service to others is involved, but they are community institutions, which are a partnership between students, parents, teachers, boards of management, patrons, and finally in supporting and backing it up, the State. We need to be conscious that there is no suggestion that boards of management or teachers should be singled out or held to account for problems that may not necessarily exist. We are all aware of schools in our communities where a small number of parents engage in behaviours which are not respectful and they are constantly critical of schools and teachers. We have heard of stories of young teachers being abused and insulted by parents, vexatious complaints being made and so on. Only last evening a good friend of mine - who is a second level deputy school principal and a very enlightened person very much focused on the empowerment and welfare of students - described a situation where a parent was tearing strips out of her in the context of the child, who has challenging behaviour and was threatening to make complaints against her. Her only answer was cheerfully to offer the parent a form and show the parent how to fill it out. We need to acknowledge that is part of the reality in sections of our community that make the teaching life difficult at times.

Regarding charters, it is important, as I have always said, that we do not just talk about rights, as important as they are, as there has to be a mutuality. We need to find ways to talk about responsibilities as well and alert people to their responsibilities. They are a tiny minority, but we need to ensure that teachers and school management do not feel we are ignoring these cases and taking a stance that gives students and parents new rights at their expense.We should remember at all times that the primary role of the educator of children falls to parents. Research demonstrates consistently that the greater the involvement and interest of parents in their children's education, the better the outcomes for the children. Beyond this, the Education Act 1998 provides that the Minister has a responsibility to set national education policy and ensure adequate provision is made for all children to be educated according to the wishes of their parents and "the practices and traditions relating to the organisation of schools [...] and the right of schools to manage their own affairs in accordance with [...] any charters [...] or other such instruments relating to their establishment". Section 15 of the 1998 Act also makes it clear that boards of management owe their duties to the patrons of schools for the benefit of students and their parents, not to the State or the Minister for Education and Skills. The idea is boards of management should be unhindered in how they operate schools as long as they observe the objects of national education policy. That, of course, is always the rub. What should come under national education policy? One person's necessary and desirable extension of national education policy and the requirements it places on schools is another's mission creep. The State must always be conscious that it is in a partnership, rather than a domination, role.

The Bill involves the setting of prescriptive standards by way of legislation and guidelines for what the proposed charters should contain. It will allow the Minister, in effect, to prescribe the content of such charters as section 27A states a board of management shall not include in a charter any content that is not in accordance with or as provided for by the charter guidelines. That causes me concern. I wonder what mischief it is meant to address. As a provision, it appears exclusivist in its language, albeit I acknowledge freely that the Minister may have a very good answer to the question. If so, I would like to hear it.

The Minister for Education and Skills will also be allowed to intervene directly under the provisions of section 27D where he or she believes the new standards are being inadequately followed or not at all. This may be justifiable where there are widespread problems in the way schools are administering their affairs. However, we must be honest too about the extent to which such problems actually arise. I have no objection to student and parent charters in principle. However, there is an important principle of mutuality, of which we must not lose sight. That is the main point in what I have had to say.

I will refer briefly to what Senator Ó Ríordáin has been saying about money and voluntary contributions. I sympathise with his perspective and recognise his experience in education. None of us would be happy with a situation in which a parent's ability to engage with a school as an equal and respected person within that relationship would be compromised by issues connected with the ability to make a contribution of one kind or another. That is certainly not where we want the education system to be. However, I will make two points and they are not to seek to trump in any way what Senator Ó Ríordáin says. I do not think they do. However, they are points that should always be taken into consideration in this context. The first is expressed in the old Irish saying "an rud a fhaightear go bog caitear go bog é," the thing that is easily acquired is easily thrown away. While contributions should always be according to people's means, part of me sympathises with the view that at some level there should not be an expectation that the State will provide everything and that something is expected from families. We point, rightly, to gaps in the health service which cause the vulnerable to suffer and angrily and righteously seek to address them. It is the same with the education system. However, that does not mean that we should not promote and propose a mentality of participation, contribution and sacrifice. I would not like that sense of public expectation that there would be an attempt to make a contribution, having regard to the means of the individual, disappear. Too often, we hear in public debates a certain mentality expressed as follows: what about me and what about my rights? A society cannot survive and remain healthy for long if that is the dominant narrative. As such and while recognising the complete validity of what Senator Ó Ríordáin says, there has to be space in the conversation to inculcate publicly a sense that a contribution is expected. That should apply not only to voluntary schools but to State-funded schools also.

The bigger point perhaps is as follows. We can talk about voluntary contributions and how iniquitous and involuntary they may, in fact, be, which is certainly true. However, the long running debate about the unequal funding of schools, having regard to whether they are ETB or voluntary schools, has not been resolved. We have heard recently from school secretaries, for example, who receive very low pay and have very poor employment or earnings prospects in the voluntary sector. People working in the State system, however, enjoy a completely different level of remuneration and security. If we are to be honest and fair in this debate, the issue of unequal contributions and State support for schools must be addressed as well as and no later than the issue of voluntary contributions. The State has a duty to support schooling of whatever kind parents and families choose. There was a time when there was religious staffing of schools, which meant that there were, in effect, free, non-salaried contributions to the effort or service, if I can use that word, those schools provided. To some degree that let the State off the hook as to how it funded those schools. As I understand it, these inequalities continue to this day and they must be addressed. One cannot simply talk about the problem with voluntary contributions without accepting that there is an inequality which must be addressed at the same time. Otherwise, one would unfairly deprive schools of the chance to avail of the voluntary contributions necessary to make up the shortfall which stems from unequal State funding.