The middle classes will soon be paying more money for a great deal less in education
WHAT IS it about the Irish and education? Is there any other country where education and schooling are discussed so keenly around the kitchen table? Where the Leaving Cert or its equivalent attracts such media focus? For the Irish, investment in education has always been the elevator to better things.
As we enter the fifth year of recession, demand for places in expensive fee-paying schools remains robust. Despite the widespread availability of excellent “free” second-level education, more than 26,000 pupils are enrolled in the State’s 56 fee-paying schools – at a cost of more than €120 million to their parents and guardians.
Enrolment patterns in private education have fallen since 2008, but only marginally. Private education may have become unaffordable for some, but schools such as Belvedere and Blackrock are continuing to show a surge in numbers.
Our strong attachment to schools is evident in other ways. Last month an ad hoc protest by teachers, parents and pupils about cuts to disadvantaged, or Deis, schools drew 4,000 people to a rally outside the Department of Education. The threat to small schools in rural Ireland is drawing hundreds to protest meetings around the country.
These cuts, and threatened cuts, are being applied to an already underfunded education system. On an OECD scale, ranking overall education spending in relation to wealth or gross domestic product, the State is 27th of 31 countries surveyed.
Things are getting worse. In 1996, some 19 per cent of exchequer income was spent on education; by 2010 this had dipped to 16 per cent.
IN TOTAL the State invests close to €9 billion per year in education but over 70 per cent of this is absorbed by pay and pensions for the 94,000 teachers, lecturers and others who work in the system. With these payments ringfenced under the Croke Park deal, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has cut back on frontline services to secure the cuts demanded by Cabinet colleagues.
The ferocious backlash against the cuts to Deis schools has already forced Quinn to change tack. A U-turn is expected next month although the Minister says he will have to find alternative savings in his budget.
Quinn is right about the pressure bearing down on education spending. The population boom of the past two decades has placed unprecedented pressure on the entire system. Using various scenarios, the Department of Education has tried to project the possible increase in enrolment across the education sector to 2030.
The main features include:
* at primary level, enrolment will increase from 509,000 in 2010 to 540,000 by 2014 and possibly 561,000 by 2030;
* second-level enrolment will increase from 317,000 to 334,000 by 2014 and possibly 360,000 by 2030;
* at third level the number of students will increase from 161,000 to 190,000 by 2014, rising under some scenarios to 282,000 by 2030.
Privately, one senior figure concedes: “The education system will do well to stand still, never mind growing and expanding over the next two decades.”
Over the next five years much of the progress made in Irish education recently is likely to be rolled back. Classrooms are likely to become more crowded, special needs provision is set to be more restricted, and access to higher education could be more limited.
Increases in class size are virtually certain. A one-point increase in the staffing schedule at primary and second level will generate savings of €70 million; it is the kind of crude, sweeping reduction that cost-cutters will find hard to resist.
Ireland already has the second most overcrowded primary classrooms in the EU; almost 100,000 of our children are still being educated in classes of over 30 pupils. Increases in class size will see the loss of hundreds of potential teaching posts at primary and second level.
At second level, it will also mean more limited subject choice for pupils. The Government is cajoling more students into taking maths and the sciences at higher level in the Leaving Cert, but cuts in teacher numbers will inhibit the capacity of schools to roll out these subjects.
The progress achieved in providing support for special needs children may also come under threat. The previous administration imposed a cap of 10,400 on the number of special needs assistants. While the last budget maintained this figure, some senior figures in education favour significant cuts in the €1 billion special needs budget.
Officials are also targeting smaller rural schools. More than 50 per cent of the State’s 3,200 primary schools have four teachers or fewer; some 20 per cent have only one or two teachers. All of these schools are cherished by their local communities and form an integral part of village life. But in the scramble for cuts, many smaller schools are vulnerable to amalgamation or even closure.
IT IS in higher education that parents face the tightest squeeze. Only one of two possible scenarios seems credible in the short to medium term: a substantial increase in students’ contributions and/or a cap on student numbers.
Students and their parents have already taken some pain. The Student Contribution Fee (formerly the Registration Charge) has increased from €1,500 in 2010 to €2,250 in the last budget.
The increase has done little to pull third-level colleges out of a financial hole. Funding will be cut by a cumulative 6 per cent in the three years to 2014. Exchequer support per student has declined from €9,900 in 2007 to below €8,700 in 2010 – and it is still falling. Staff numbers have been cut by 6 per cent. Capital spending has been virtually frozen.
All of this means reduced student services, more crowded lecture theatres, and a decline in the overall quality of higher education in Ireland. The QS world university rankings have already got the drift. For the first time Ireland has no university among the world’s top 100. Irish universities are now muddling through with about 60 per cent of the funding available to their counterparts in Britain or the rest of the EU.
Both the 2004 OECD Report on Higher Education and the 2011 National Strategy for Higher Education or Hunt report have backed the reintroduction of fees.
Quinn has backed away from this proposal in the short term. But he or his successor must find a sustainable funding base for higher education as it struggles to cope with a 30 per cent increase in enrolment.
The only feasible alternative to a return of fees is a cap on student numbers, which has already been signalled as a possibility by some university presidents and by the Higher Education Authority.
WHAT WILL all this mean for the squeezed middle class? There is what one might call a lose-lose scenario – the middle classes will be paying more money for a great deal less in education. There will be more cake sales and summer fairs to pay for the heating and refurbishment. Schools will – with reluctance, and even trepidation – ask parents to dig deeper with “voluntary” contributions. Universities will be seeking higher fees.
There is the sense that Irish education is returning to the 1980s when the system muddled through with its prefabs and its leaky roofs. Great progress has been made since then. Is much of this to be lost in the next decade, as the squeeze tightens?
Private route now unaffordable for some parents
From the turn of the century to 2008, the numbers enrolled in private schools in the State rose by just 1,300. Most of this increase took place up to 2003, before the most frenzied period of the boom/bubble took hold. If demand for private education grew far more slowly than incomes at that time, a fall in enrolments in the two years to the start of the 2010 school year suggests that private education has become unaffordable for some. -
DAN O'BRIEN, Economics Editor
FEELING THE PAIN
Education cuts to date include . . .
* Pupil-teacher ratio in schools of one- to four-teacher schools increased
* Cutbacks in staffing in Deis schools
* Increased school transport charges
* Cuts in English language teachers for newcomer children
* Day-to-day funding of primary and second level schools cut back
* Modern languages programme in primary schools cut
* Professional guidance service in second-level schools cut back
* Pupil-teacher ratio increased for fee-paying schools by one point to 21:1
* Increase in student contribution fee to €2,250
* Six per cent cut in staff at third level
* Two per cent cut in running costs for third-level colleges, despite record numbers
. . . and what may be coming
* Return of third-level fees
* Cap on student numbers at third level
* Cap on SNA posts in schools
* Higher fees in private schools as cuts bite
* Closure of smaller primary schools
* Restricted subject choice at second level as teacher posts abolished
* Increase in student contribution fee to €3,000 by 2015
