Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I would share my time but I am here solo and I do not expect to speak for the full time.

I welcome the Minister and congratulate her on her position. I have a long history through the education system myself as a parent and I am a former chair of the Home Education Network.

I take the opportunity to speak about the fact that children are going back to school and to say it is fantastic that we have in place now such a comprehensive plan. I hope the Minister will adjust and make changes, having seen how schools and children are coping and how the families and the staff, in particular, are coping.I have had many representations from schools and I was formally a chair of a school board. We need to ensure that the short-term measures do not impede the long-term future of these schools. I would like the Minister to take that into consideration.

To go back to home education, I welcome and support the proposal in the programme for Government for a citizens' assembly on education. Now is the time we need to look at pedagogy and education and what that means for our society. To educate means to learn about the culture and the society we are brought up in and how to be valuable members of society. What that means now is very different from what it meant even a year ago, but certainly a decade ago. The education system simply is not fit for purpose when we consider that more than 90% of schools are still Catholic. We need to address that but we also need to address what we are learning in school. I urge the Minister to look at a fantastic programme on empathy, which is fully funded and which Professor Pat Dolan, the UNESCO chair of the Child and Family Research Centre in Galway, was behind. In terms of teaching our children in a school setting, we need to look at what empathy really means and the different cultures that surround us. This is the time to do that.

I was the chair of the Home Education Network. Some 40% of nine year old children reported having been bullied in the previous year. That is from the Growing Up in Ireland study. I hope that will have changed but I do not have full confidence that we have the staff numbers to ensure that it has changed. Alternatives are needed. It has been referred to previously that we have a constitutional right to home educate. More people may choose to do that but there have been inequities in that regard. It has been incredibly difficult to receive dental services or vaccinations when one was outside of a school system. It has been incredibly difficult to do the leaving certificate when one was outside of a school system, but 50% of those who choose to home educate do so because the school was not working. They removed their children from school for a variety of reasons. That means that we have to ensure that those people are catered for. Before the pandemic, the Department of Education and Skills website said that it was compulsory for children to go to school beyond the age of six. It is not compulsory, as I am sure the Minister is aware. That was closing off an avenue to people who were struggling. Many of the calls I was receiving were to ask about the other options when a child is struggling. Do they have to cry for two years in a row because they are being bullied in a school system or are we actually supporting them by providing other alternatives?

It was a significant step that the 2014 legislation moved responsibility for home education and home tuition, as mentioned earlier, from the Department of Education and Skills to Tusla. I welcome the fact that it has been moved back because these are not extreme situations. These are our families. They are the same as anyone else. They are being educated and they should be treated the same.

I will not speak any further on that other than to say that I welcome the Minister's position. I look forward to working with her and to bringing an alternative view to education, which I believe is valuable when we are talking about a society as diverse as ours.