Vulnerable must have access to education during recession, says union

ACCESS to education must not be restricted to the better-off during the recession, a leading trade unionist stressed yesterday.

IMPACT general secretary, Peter McLoone, said the organisation was trying to safeguard equality and access to education in the ongoing talks on resolving the economic crisis.

The union, representing more than 6,000 members working in the education centre, is concerned that spending cuts have begun to chip away at education provision and will be opposing further cuts.

Mr McLoone, who was speaking at a seminar organised by IMPACT on equality and disadvantage in education, stressed that sharing the load when it came to devising economic solutions meant protecting the most vulnerable.

If the social partners and the Government got it right, the most vulnerable people in our society should emerge from this period of recession having had, at the very least, the same opportunities in education that they had now, he said.

“This means maintaining the level of service you already provide; protecting the standards that you have all worked hard to achieve. We should hope for nothing less than that, but continue to be ambitious.”

Barnardos chief executive Fergus Finlay said the education system had a huge role to play, not just in dealing with the causes of poverty among children, but also in ending child poverty.

He was particularly disappointed that an opportunity had been missed during the Celtic Tiger era to establish a pre-school education system.

“There is little doubt that high-quality intervention at an early stage does a lot to tear down barriers,” he said.

“In the most recent OECD table I’ve seen, we spent the equivalent of $5,900 (€4,550) (per pupil on primary education; $7,500 on second-level education and $10,200 on third-level,” he pointed out.

“All the figures were well below the OECD average. We weren’t able to record any figure whatever for pre-school education against an OECD average of $4,508.

IMPACT assistant general secretary Philip Mullen claimed the increasing practice of segregating children into special needs units within some main stream schools was undermining the principle of mainstreaming special needs education.