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STI members are striking in defence
of conditions in their secondary
schools. The majority of teachers
is to refuse to hold parent/teacher
meetings outside of school hours and to
withdraw co-operation over reforms to the
Junior Cert. As a result the Government will
impose multiple nastinesses on members
of the union, including the possibility of
forced redundancies. The union argues the
Government breached the original Croke Park
deal by introducing further cuts in pay under
Haddington Road, but maintains the action is
largely in defence of education itself.
What’s the problem?
Education is reported to face cuts of up
to € million in the imminent Budget
although recent cuts already mean that many
schools have lost guidance counsellors, lan-
guage and special needs teachers and year
heads. Support hours for children with spe-
cial educational needs have been reduced by
per cent due in the last three years, due
to an increase in demand. There has been a
reduction of almost one percent in the pupil
teacher ratio to : in secondary schools.
Almost a quarter of primary school children
are in classes of or more. Cuts have been
foisted on the budget for children with learn-
ing difficulties and that for Traveller children
devastated. And of course teachers’ pay has
been cut by an average of around % since
, and they are doing more work.
Beyond these ‘headline indicators’, there
is total disagreement on how we’re doing. It
seems that for years Irish people couldn’t
get their heads around the idea we’re not
just the friendliest country on earth but also
supremely well educated. We’re making up
for that now, however.
Ireland’s performance in the last
Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) survey results in
was, according to now-Minister Ruairí Quinn
posturising at the time “a shocking indication
of how our education system fails to perform
at the most basic levels. It is evidence of the
complacency of the Fianna Fáil government to
the structural decline in standards achieved
by students in reading,
maths and science. We
are down places,
from th to th in
reading levels among
participating coun-
tries. In maths, we have
slipped from th to
th. We are below
average in maths and
just average in reading.
Incredibly, the class of
is the first gener-
ation of Irish students
not to have a better
standard of literacy
than their parents”.
Shocking.
How do we stand?
In Ireland, % of
adults aged - have completed second-
level education, close to the OECD average
of %. Extraordinarily, between
and , the percentage of people with a
college education in Ireland nearly doubled,
rising at an annual average of . per cent
– faster than any other country, while gradua-
tion from second-level rose from per cent
to per cent. Overall, per cent of Irish
people have a third-level degree, putting us
in the top ten worldwide.
There are post-primary schools,
, pupils and , teachers.
fee-paying schools continue to receive nearly
€ million gross a year from the State, the
bulk of it in teachers’ salaries. They do well
in self-serving newspaper league tables but
nearly all of this is down to entrance poli-
cies rather than superior teaching. As Niall
Crowley points out on p they do not serve
the common good and should be abolished or
de-subsidised. In general though there is lit-
tle private financing of Irish education. The
vast majority of schools are non fee-paying,
though two thirds of parents of these reported
paying a voluntary contribution.
In the proportion of early school
leavers in Ireland in was % which
compares to the EU- and EU- averages
of % and % respectively.
What is the vision?
It is widely accepted now that getting to kids,
especially potentially underperformers, early
is the best use of scarce resources: “% of
the brain develops between the ages of zero to
five, yet we spend % of our dollars on kids
above the age of five”, says Timothy Knowles
of the University of Chicago.
In January a universal free pre-
school initiative for children in the year
before attending primary school was
launched in Ireland. The latest data con-
cerning the initiative known as the Early
Childhood Care & Education Scheme (ECCE)
show, encouragingly, that % of eligible
children are participating in the scheme,
an overall improvement in average reading
and mathematics achievement statistically
significant at all grade levels and greatest at
lower grade levels and most marked among
pupils with lower levels of achievement. It is
now being proposed to extend the initiative
to two years.
The most recent report by the OECD in
, found that -year-olds who had
attended pre-schools for more than a year
performed better (even accounting for
Educating educators
Self-awareness and analysis of problems and
best international solutions needed, at
secondary level. By Michael Smith
NEWS
SPECIAL
Secondary Education
10
9
Percentage of Gross National Income
Denmark
Ireland
Sweden
Finland
Belgium
United Kingdom
Netherlands
Austria
Estonia
Portugal
France
Slovenia
Poland
Spain
Italy
Czech Republic
Slovakia
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
OECD 2010. Cunha, Heckman et al. (2006), Interpreting the evidence on
life cycle skill formation, Handbook of the Economics of Education
— October – November 2013
socioeconomic background) than those
who had attended for only a year or not at
all. In Belgium, France and Israel pupils edu-
cated at pre-schools had much higher reading
scores than those who had stayed at home.
The greatest success in pre-school provision
probably comes from reaching the children
who need it most, from poor, neglectful or
unstable families. But this is hard.
Early-years learning is not a magic solu-
tion to the elusive modern quest for social
mobility. But it can help avoid kids getting
so disillusioned that there is no way back. At
a federal level, Barack Obama used February’s
state-of-the-union message to unveil a gar-
gantuan $ billion plan to use tobacco taxes
to provide ‘pre-K’ to all children from low-
and middle-income families. Republicans in
Congress have shown little interest but it is
part of an international trend.
In October Quinn announced the
phasing out of the current Junior Certificate
programme over the next eight years, to be
replaced by a school-based model of con-
tinuous assessment. He described his plan
as “the most radical shake-up of the junior
cycle programme since the ending of the Inter
Cert in ”, and claimed the scrapping of
the Junior Certificate exams, would help the
“bottom half” of students. It is not clear what
the effect will be on the top half and there are
fears that school certificates based on grades
awarded by students’ own teachers will not
have the same status or validity as an inde-
pendent State certificate.
In January, Quinn launched Ireland’s first
ever national plan to tackle bullying includ-
ing cyberbullying in schools. The Action Plan
on Bullying set out clear actions on how
to prevent and tackle bullying. After throw-
ing some shapes the Minister backed down
on plans to require flexibility on expensive
uniforms from schools.
Quinn is currently proposing a Bill to bring
transparency to schools’ admissions policies,
eliminating the first-come-first served pol-
icy that has typically served private-school
education hawks. For students with special
education needs, the prospects are improved.
Any school with available places will, under
this proposal, have to take all-comers.
What should we be doing generally?
According to the OECD in , the priori-
ties for primary and post-primary education
over the coming years in Ireland will be to
continue to promote quality, relevance
and inclusiveness by supporting schools in
developing an inclusive environment for all
learners, targeting interventions to address
educational disadvantage, raising educational
attainment, meeting the needs of pupils with
special education needs, providing supports
for immigrant children, enhancing teacher
education and professional development,
promoting ongoing curriculum development,
school evaluation and quality improvement,
and providing high-quality school accom-
modation together with administrative and
financial supports. But it’s really a question
of how to do all this.
What should we be doing precisely?
Pupils in Finland, Korea, Japan and Canada
consistently score higher in educational rank-
ings than their peers in Ireland, Germany, the
UK, America and France. While it is important
– as a minimum standard – to level the field to
ensure their educational systems are not sim-
ply engines for inter-generational inequality,
it is not true, as is often implied, that wealth,
privilege and race determine international
rankings or indeed outcomes for specific
schools. Focusing on equality, though an over-
arching social imperative, won’t be enough
to ensure high educational outcomes. That
is certainly not to say that freedom should
run riot over equality in education: voguish
‘choice-maximising’ charter schools, some-
times run for profit, work: in the US many fail,
particularly in poor areas.
Spending per head is not determinant. For
example, confoundingly, Ireland, Finland and
Britain spend around the OECD average per-
centage of GDP on all levels of education but
South Korea and the US spend at the high-
est level.
Teachers, not surprisingly, argue that
class size is the biggest determinant of edu-
cational success, but that is simply not the
case. Indeed Kevin Denny of UCD maintains,
apparently perversely, that big class sizes are
actually associated with better performance,
at least in the PISA results.
In her book, ‘The Smartest Kids in the
World: And How They Got That Way’, Amanda
Ripley plausibly argues that she has answers
to the big questions. A big message is that
national culture matters more than the struc-
ture of an education system. So a huge lesson
for policymakers may be to put education at
the forefront of the story a nation tells about
itself, as has traditionally been the case in
Ireland. Above all Ripley rams home the
importance of teachers being held in high
regard, and children being expected to suc-
ceed. Andreas Schleicher, who runs the PISA
studies, says that successful countries tend to
hire excellent teachers and keep them moti-
vated, monitoring their work and intervening
when they falter.
A key question for the ASTI is: are teach-
ers and teachers’ unions a force for all that?
The answer must be: “well, yes and no”.
Outcomes, Ruairí Quinn will be aware, can
change rapidly. For example, many students
in educationally-ascendant Asian countries
have grandparents who are barely literate.
Finland is generally regarded as the edu-
cational paraclete, topping international
educational tables and – despite fewer natural
resources even than Ireland – advancing up
the global economic competitiveness leagues
on the back of it. It disdains the test-driven,
top-down model that much of the Western
world uses. Finnish children don’t start
school until they are , rarely take exams or
do homework until they are well into their
teens, sit in small classes of mixed abilities,
are not measured at all for the first six years
of their education and take only one stand-
ardised test, when they are .
Finland spends an unremarkable share
of its GDP on schools – % less than the
US, and pays teachers unspectacular sala-
ries. Nevertheless it is indicative that in
Finland less than % of those who apply
to be teachers are successful; and, along with
medicine, teaching is the most sought-after
profession.
NEWS SECONDARY EDUCATION SPECIAL
8
Public Private
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
IDN
HUN
BRA
CHE
NOR
SVK
CZE
RUS
DEU
ITA
JPN
ESP
AUS
PRT
AUT
SVN
IRL
NLD
GBR
POL
EST
MEX
FIN
OECD
FRA
CAN
SWE
NZL
BEL
CHL
DNK
USA
ISR
KOR
ISL
Public and private education spending for all levels of education
Public and private as a percentage of GDP, 2008 or latest available year
