Pay cuts for teachers could be back on the agenda unless the Croke Park Agreement delivers real savings, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has signalled.
In echoing a similar warning from Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte, the education minister said everyone realised that tangible savings must be achieved under the deal.
He said discussions with the teachers unions ahead of the Easter conferences would be focusing on the necessity to implement Croke Park. For his part, he was happy to co-operate with constructive proposals to achieve the necessary additional productivity and savings. But everyone, he said, realised, what needed to be done.
The Croke Park deal promises no pay cuts and redundancies until 2014 in return for modernisation measures and productivity gains. The Cabinet will meet tonight to consider how savings might be achieved in each department.
Mr Quinn said he expected the Department of Education would be asked to make savings.
Last week, a Department of Finance briefing document expressed alarm at the slow pace of savings in the education department. To date, the agreement has managed to yield savings of €39 million from a total education budget of close to €9 billion.
Mr Quinn said today: “The country is in a very difficult state and we are not in control of our sovereignty. The reality is that on a fortnightly basis we have to meet the targets set by the IMF-EU and it is only when we meet these targets that the ECB will lend us money for the next fortnight which allows us to pay teachers, garda and other public servants. That’s the reality of where we are."
Asked about the proposed cull of Government quangos, Mr Quinn said he had "no preconceptions" in relation to the dozen of so quangos in the education area. Last month, an Irish Times survey showed average salaries of up to €70,000 per year in some of these quangos.
Mr Quinn was speaking as the results of a new literacy initiative showed encouraging results in disadvantaged schools.
The initiative – in which teachers gained on site professional development- helped to reverse literacy standards in one school in Darndale, Dublin. The Write to Read initiative also placed a greater stress on parental involvement.
The scheme is set to be rolled out in other areas of Dublin including schools in Bluebell, the inner city and Inchicore.
The Government is in the process of developing a new national literacy strategy. This comes after OECD results showed an alarming decline in literacy standards among 15 year old. Ireland has dropped from 5th to 17th in world rankings. Mr Quinn has said the OECD study represents a wake up call for Irish education.
The main findings of the survey were:
- The numbers of children below the 10th percentile in reading on a standardised test were reduced by 75 per cent.
- At the end of the study 20 per cent of children were above the 80th percentile whereas there had been no children in this category at the beginning of the study.
This evidence clearly shows that, given the right conditions, there should be no obstacles preventing children from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve to the level of their more advantaged peers.
Speaking at the launch, Mr Quinn said: "In the Programme for Government my commitment to radically improving the literacy and numeracy standards achieved by our young people is clear.
"I have indicated that this will be one of the major goals of the Government and one where I am determined that we will address the serious weaknesses in young people’s learning that national assessments, inspection reports and international surveys have identified.
"Clearly the changes which are necessary to meet the challenge of reversing the downward trend will need to start at early childhood and primary education but this is an issue for second level schools as well," said Mr Quinn.
The Programme for Government commits to developing and implementing a national literacy and numeracy strategy which will provide a comprehensive set of measures to improve learning outcomes for children and young people.
The Department of Education is engaged in a public consultation process on the contents of the strategy. The department has received a very large number of written submissions, and officials are meeting education partners and interest groups as part of the process.
