Alan Dukes: Education
Policy makers need to learn some common sense if proposals on Protestant school funding are anything to go by, writes Alan Dukes.
The row over the funding of Protestant
schools is a direct result of one of the silliest Government decisions of
recent years. It goes back to a decision announced in October 2008 to reduce
extra funding to these schools and has been compounded by an announcement this
year that the remaining €2.8m in grants to these institutions are to be
discontinued.
The Government has stated that this is being done on the advice of the Attorney-General which, in keeping with long-standing practice, is not made public. (Opposition parties always challenge the Government to publish such advice. Amnesia in relation to practices which they accepted in Government seems to be endemic to Oppositions. Of course, there are perfectly good reasons for not publishing such advice, which need not detain us here).
This, however, begs the question as to why these extra payments survived for over 40 years, despite the fact that their constitutionality was examined at least once during that period.
A very practical question arises: what happens if the result of this action is to make it impossible for any one of the schools in question to continue? The pupils will still have to go to some school. The necessary number of teachers will have to be paid and provision will have to be made for whatever ancillary services are to be provided.
It is inconceivable that a problem has suddenly arisen in funding services for these schools only. I will not be thanked for saying it, but it is surely blindingly obvious that, if it is absolutely neccessary for economies to be made, they should be spread across the entire secondary school system rather than being targeted at this particular group of schools.
If, on the other hand, it is felt that this area of expenditure should not be touched, then the same logic should apply to all schools. That reflection, in turn, prompts the question: where now is the element in the Fianna Fail-Green Party "amended" Programme for Government that expenditure on education should not be touched? I thought at the time that agreement was made that it was unwise to exclude any area of expenditure so near to a very difficult budget negotiation. It now appears not only to have been unwise but also to have been at least partly futile.
The controversy about the issue has brought some old shibboleths back out into the open. One of them is that Protestant fee-paying schools are "posh" and enjoy a "privileged" position. It is true that a number of these schools provide extra facilities paid for by parents' contributions. They are not alone in this: similar situations are to be found in many other schools across the country. It is not only in some Protestant fee-paying schools that some rather better-off parents make extra contributions (which typically benefit all pupils in the school, including the children of less well-off parents). If parents can do this and can afford to do so, there is no conceivable reason why they should not.
As the difficulty of constructing the kind of budget we need becomes more and more apparent, it will become increasingly clear that no area of expenditure can be left out of the reckoning. Expenditure on education will come under scrutiny. When it does, I expect that we will see yet another shibboleth being trotted out.
Some "egalitarians" will propose that the State cease to pay teachers' salaries in all fee-paying schools, on the grounds that the taxpayer should not have to subsidise the well-off. (Mind you, the same "egalitarians" will resist any interference with the payment of Child Benefit on a universal basis).
This idea used to have some traction in some parts of the Labour Party although, ironically, it was a Labour Minister for Education who abolished third-level fees, a move which gave a completely uncovenanted and unexpected benefit to the "well-off".
In the year in which it was implemented, this abolition of fees saved me £3,000 or the equivalent then of £6,000 in pre-tax income. I was not, of course, the only one, but I was among a large number who certainly could have gotten by without it. There is no evidence, however, that it significantly benefited young people whose parents could not afford to send them to third level education, even though they would not have been obliged to pay fees even before the general abolition.
If this particular proposal surfaces, it must be resisted on common sense grounds. The only result it would have would be a movement of pupils into other schools, requiring the payment of the same amount of teachers' salaries (and other ancillary payments) as before, but at the cost of unnecessary political and social upheaval.
Once again, I have to plead for a bit more common sense in decision-making.
