THE BACKDROP to the annual round of teacher conferences this week could scarcely be more different from a year ago, when the economy was strong and the budgetary position robust. Last year, for the third year in succession, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin was able to roll out new programmes and additional spending in various areas.
It is all very different this year. In a series of preconference briefings, the Minister has already signalled to the teacher unions that there is no extra money in the kitty and few new programmes to be announced. Instead, the Minister is likely to trumpet the record €9 billion budget for education and the progress achieved in areas such as special needs, language supports and school buildings.
It seems unlikely that delegates will be much impressed. Yes, the Minister deserves credit for the expansion of services in key areas but the education system - for all its many virtues - remains chronically underfunded when compared to our EU partners. This is still an education system which relies, to an unhealthy extent, on voluntary contributions by parents and various events organised by schools. It is an education system where the kind of administrative support services taken for granted in business are often absent. And it is a system where many schools operate within a tight budget, with no room for manoeuvre.
The core problem remains the relative lack of investment in education by the Government. The Republic is close to the bottom of the OECD league table when it comes to education spending relative to wealth. Indeed, as the OECD points out, the proportion of GDP we invest in education has actually fallen from 5.2 per cent in 1995 to 4.6 per cent in 2007. The consequences of this lack of investment can be seen in most classrooms and in most schools. The Republic has some of the largest class sizes in Europe. It has one of the lowest levels of computer use in schools in the EU and a deplorable lack of modern facilities for science teaching. In the area of special needs, parents - who cannot afford to go private - must often wait for psychological assessments. Other parents feel they have to go to the courts to vindicate their child's right to a full education.
As the economic picture darkens, the Government faces an important choice. It can retrench and impose real cutbacks on education services - or it can boost education spending.
In today's newspaper, the new general secretary of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, Peter MacMenamin, makes a persuasive case for the latter option. The Government, he says, should learn from the lessons of the 1980s, when cutbacks proved counter-productive.
An imaginative approach would see the Government moving to upskill some 500,000 people, as recommended by last year's key Forfás report on expert skills, and boosting spending in schools and colleges across the education sector. This would be a bold investment in the future. But are this Government and Minister prepared to be bold and imaginative in education?