QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:Frustration at the dire funding levels in Education is a constant theme of letters to this column. Today, I will outline the issues we face in addressing our collective, lifelong educational needs, writes Brian Mooney.
Over Easter, the education conferences dominated the news agenda, and this year, the calls for more resources were louder than usual, due to the withdrawal of political promises made prior to last year's election. But as we move into May, the impending State exams will push aside the issue of under-funding. Unless something dramatic happens - such as large groups of children having no school to go to in September - education will disappear from the news until the Leaving Cert results in August.
Is the issue of under-funding in education just a normal part of political discourse?
We place huge value on education, and for our own children, will do everything in our power to ensure that they receive the best education we can possibly provide. If we have the resources, we will pay for our children to attend fee-paying schools. We will join parents associations and serve tea at school events, in the hope that our commitment will get our child the attention they require.
We may feel slightly guilty that we do not have to personally fund our children's undergraduate education, but God help anyone politician who would attempt to take that perk away from us. Once our children leave the education system, we develop a form of amnesia regarding education issues and quickly come to regard educational expenditure as somebody else's responsibility. This is the essence of our collective attitude to education, and is reflected by our political representatives, who allocate 4.6 per cent of the wealth we generate each year to fund our education system, one of the lowest levels in the developed world. Back in 1995, they allocated 5.2 per cent, but in the past 12 years, our politicians gave us the option of reducing our direct taxes, thus putting more money in our pockets, instead of increasing the budget of the Minister for Education. We acknowledged their wisdom by re-electing them.
Do we have to accept such a "yellow-pack" national education system?
We accept that the early years of life are crucial to children's development and that a national pre-school system would greatly advance children's development. We know that our children need class sizes of no more than 20. We affirm the rights of children with special needs to an appropriate education. We believe our children should have the best science, technology, and language resources. We are happy that 60 per cent of our school- leavers now progress to third level, but are troubled to hear universities tell us that the current levels of funding still fall far short of what's needed.
Where do we go from here?
We need to increase annual funding on education to 7 per cent. We need to look at education as we do health and social welfare - something we fund as part of our commitment to a society we are proud of, and not just something we fund when our own children are part of the the system. Who among our political leaders has the courage and vision to address this?
