Expenses paid to councillors on VECs condemned

THE expenses and allowances paid to councillors serving on vocational education committees (VECs) were last night condemned by a primary management leader.

The 33 city and county VECs act as managers of almost 300 vocational and community schools, as well as further education colleges and local training schemes. Their boards include councillors nominated by the local authority in each VEC area.

Paul Rowe, chief executive of Educate Together, which is patron body to almost 60 multi-denominational primary schools, said that Irish primary education remains one of the most efficient delivery systems of public service as it is run by local board members.

“There are no administrative grades in a system that is managed by 21,000 volunteers and is kept afloat only by huge levels of parental, staff and community fundraising,” Mr Rowe said.

“These volunteers receive none of the stipends, expenses, mileage allowances and other inducements that are paid to the politicians sitting on management boards of state, second-level schools.”

More than 300 city, county and town councillors are serving on the VECs, but the expenses and allowances paid to them are unknown, because the committees are not yet covered by Freedom of Information legislation.

Co Dublin VEC became the first committee to take a role in primary education in September 2007 in two pilot schools, in a move which could see other VECs act as patron to new primary schools around the country.

At the same time, Educate Together is seeking recognition from Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe to become a patron for second-level schools, but his department has said it will decide the issue based on a wider examination of patronage at second level.

Mr Rowe told the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation annual congress that cuts in primary teacher numbers which will push up class sizes, and other budget cuts were not supported by school managers. “Primary management feel that they have been forced into a battle against clumsy and irrational government decisions in which we have to fight a rearguard action, trying to show the shortsightedness of these policies whilst wrestling with the management issues of their implementation.”