Time to take a hard look at how we do education
Let’s leave aside the mad Leninist concept of equal pay for equal work, and the Trotskyite raving of equal pay for equal work. At heart, the closure of schools will result from the abdication of the State over decades towards a key obligation — to educate.
Like the hospital situation, we don’t actually have a joined-up system of State provision. We have a hodgepodge, a mix, a shambolic melange of provision. The ASTI union members are mostly found in the old religious schools, analogous to the “voluntary” hospitals.
These were, of course, the mainstream of second-level education and health provision for decades, with the State glad to step back and outsource, providing limited and — at least perceived — poorer provision through the technical school and county hospital system.
The churches and other voluntary bodies mostly provided these services at a low or even a zero rate. We as a State were happy to entrust our health and education to the kindness of strangers, mistrustful of the very political entity we fought to create.
The idea that education is a public good not suited to the marketplace and best provided by a State system went right out the window.
The consequence is that we have a major problem of disjointed and badly-organised units. At second and primary levels, each school maintains a legal fiction of being a sole trader, an independent unit, managed by the board of management (usually untrained and well-meaning volunteers) and by a principal (usually untrained for management on appointment).
On redeployment, primary teachers go into a clearing system run by the Catholic or Church of Ireland diocese, with the bishop’s clerk acting as a clearing house, again in a well-meaning ignorance of their abilities, skills and preferences.
Schools wishing to pool resources for supplementary staff find the organisational obstacles to be formidable.
We may have the following situation: Two schools in close proximity where one has to close due to a lack of supervisors, while the other school has no ability to transfer staff. Each school is independently run, and has to manage on its own. It’s crackers.
It’s said one should never waste a good crisis. Well, this is a crisis, if we have 250,000 students out of school on an indefinite basis.
We can do better.
Let’s combine two things. Let’s look at the data from local property tax and aim to transform how we organise schools. Let’s introduce school districts, each with a professional cohort of managers, both academic and professional.
Teachers would no longer be employees of the school, but would be employed by the district.
Crucially, they can be redeployed within the district as needed. We might consider the employment of school supervisory and support staff, to free up teachers to teach.
This would at a stroke remove the confusing mixture of patronage. (Do we really want our children patronised, by the way?) It would also highlight that teachers in the most elite fee-paying schools are paid for by the State. Schools not wishing to co-operate can run and fund their own affairs.
The local property tax should be tapped to help run the schools district. The monies raised would, approximately, match the capitation grants.
Add in some Vat revenues. Now, we would have an incentive to shop locally, knowing that some of our spending is going to our local schools. And we have an incentive to have a properly-functioning local property tax. Let’s see a councillor demanding cuts to school funding through a cut in the property tax.
A final element might be to realise that education is the most powerful force we have at our disposal to tackle inequality.
Let’s have some revenue shifting between districts. This recognises that students in wealthier areas have greater home and social capital to buttress their learning.
This is all feasible. It is all legal. It is all grounded in educational theory and good tax policy. Alas, it requires a courageous and forward thinking educational philosophy.
