Book editors call for health and education to be linked

SCHOOLS must care for children’s health and welfare as well as their education if they are to help poorer pupils escape the poverty trap, an expert warned yesterday.

Dr Ann Louise Gilligan, a lecturer at St Patrick’s College in Dublin, is co-editor of a new book comprehensively examining educational disadvantage. She called for the Government to increase its investment in education to alleviate the deficit faced by children in less well-off backgrounds.

Beyond Educational Disadvantage was published yesterday and highlights many shortcomings in present schemes to alleviate disadvantage, despite increased Government investment and focus on the problem in recent years.

A key recommendation arising from the Institute of Public Administration-published book is that the Government must edu-care and not just educate.

“It is practice in many developed countries to have a nurse or doctor in an office next to the principal. But in Ireland, this is the exception rather than the norm,” Dr Gilligan said.

“It is clear that if children who live with the injustice of poverty are to get the best out of education, their health and education must be intertwined,” she said.

Dr Paul Downes, co-editor and director of St Patrick’s College Educational Disadvantage Centre, said a coherent mental health strategy must be prioritised.

“We have evidence of a high number of students with sleep problems, often brought on by anxiety and affecting their academic performances. But emotional support services for children living in poverty particularly continue to be short-term and piece-meal,” he said.

The authors also called on policy makers to tackle poverty, as it is the root cause of educational disadvantage.

One-in-10 Irish children lives in poverty and almost one-in-five pupils in poor areas are often too hungry to do their school work, many of them on a daily basis.