For most people, education is the gateway to personal development and economic progress in Ireland. Education is so vital to future generations that as a society we place a major onus on government to provide quality education to every child on an equal basis. But so blinded have we become by Ireland's run-away economic success that we have assumed that all aspects of our society have benefited. However, when it comes to the education system, this is definitely not the case.
Our economic miracle has by-passed many because our education system has failed many. At a time in this State's history when we have unprecedented resources available to us, how can anyone justify an educational system where 33,000 children with special needs are substantially neglected and 64,000 children at school have literacy problems?
Science and IT are in crisis in our schools and universities. Some 25 per cent of Irish adults are at the lowest level of literacy. Students from poorer backgrounds are four to five times less likely to go to college or university. Third-level maintenance grants increased by 15 per cent over four years, while rents, the single biggest cost affecting students, increased by more than 112 per cent in the same period.
This litany of systematic failure exposes the Minister for Education for his lack of vision and unwillingness to make our education system reflect our economic prosperity. Morale in the teaching profession is low, posts of responsibility are shunned and the curriculum fails to reflect the changing times in which we live.
Minister Woods is blinded with indifference to the chaos all around him. Our secondary schools are in turmoil. The debacle of last year's pay dispute with the ASTI has been allowed to spill over into this academic year, with the issues of supervision and substitution unresolved and the threat of school closures looming once again. Add to this the growing administrative obligations on schools, the inadequate funding for caretaker and secretarial duties, the token career guidance provision and the inadequate in-service training for teachers, all contributing to the increasing malaise in the teaching profession.
For all these reasons, and many more too numerous to mention, we desperately need an effective and focused Minister for Education and a coherent and united ASTI. The public can, and I believe will, vote to change the Minister for Education at the next general election. I can only hope that the ASTI will get their act together also. The Irish education system needs a united and coherent union to champion the cause of both teachers and pupils. The ASTI needs to re-engage with the majority of its members, listen to their views and work towards rebuilding partnership in education.
In the aftermath of the Jamie Sinnott Supreme Court ruling, the Government rushed forth to promise a new deal for children with special needs. Indeed, Minister Woods declared he had an "open chequebook" from a Government committed to meeting the needs of the disabled. The reality turned out to be very different. All signs of urgency disappeared when the Government's priorities for legislation were published at the end of September. The promised disability legislation has been put back until 2002. My colleague Frances Fitzgerald TD has moved private legislation in the Dβil, in Fine Gael time, on the Disability Commissioner Bill 2001. This bill, if passed, would establish a legal right to an assessment of needs for people with disabilities and would give a legal right to access a service commensurate with that need. It is a disgrace that the main opposition party is forced to move such a bill in the absence of true Government commitment to the disabled.
We have a highly centralised Department of Education and Science that controls the resources available to our schools. Power must be devolved from the Department to regional level in order to ensure a more efficient and effective use of these resources.
Ireland's knowledge-based economy has delivered science and technology jobs which are now the mainstay of our current prosperity. But worryingly, there has been a dramatic drop in the number of students taking science subjects at second level, with a knock-on decline at third level. Rapid remedial action is now critical. We are facing a significant shortfall in high-skilled science graduates in Ireland which, if unchecked, will become an absolute skills crisis for our economy. Fine Gael is committed to making this a top priority. There is an urgent need to invest in teacher in-service training, in upgraded laboratory facilities, in a new a practical aspect to the Leaving Cert science exams and in re-examining points-based incentives for maths and science.
The higher education grants scheme needs radical reform. Fine Gael proposals will end the kind of educational apartheid that forces thousands of students from poorer backgrounds to decline college places. For any Government committed to unlocking the doors to educational advancement for all, these reforms are paramount. Given that the current Minister has been unable or unwilling to address the deplorable state of our educational system, and has failed to champion such reform, he has clearly failed in his mandate.
While Michael Woods grapples with the question "Can we afford to invest in education?", the rest of us have long since known the answer. We can't afford not to.
