Cork Life Centre at stalemate with education department

Art Teacher Adam Conlon with student Caoimhe Cotter in the Cork Life Centre. Picture: Provision

The director of the Cork Life Centre has said the Department of Education does not understand or appreciate the centre’s work, and is attempting to supplant its current staff to “mainstream” the centre out of existence.

Life Centre director Don O’Leary described a series of departmental communications as “insulting, contradictory and speaking out of both sides of their mouths”, illustrating that the department does not respect the centre’s ethos or teaching model.

In May, Taoiseach Micheál Martin announced €100,000 in additional funding and the allocation of 12 new teaching posts to the northside centre, which currently has 55 students and offers an alternative learning experience to young people failed by conventional education.

The centre withdrew from discussions when the department was unwilling to pay its current staff, proposing instead to transfer staff to the centre from the Cork Education Training Board (CETB).

“We don’t need external staff, we need funding to pay our own staff,” Mr O’Leary told the Irish Examiner. 

“Our teachers and tutors often begin as volunteers, before progressing to part-time, and full-time work, and we need to be able to pay their wages, because the future security of the Life Centre is tied to their future security.” 

Mr O’Leary said the centre’s board has been “frustrated” by a series of “talks about nothing” where the department only seemed interested in getting CETB staff into the Life Centre, and by a number of communications which he said showed the department “just doesn’t get what we’re about”.

“The first line of a draft document last month described our students as having ‘disengaged from the mainstream education system’, like it was their fault they’d been let down by the system.” 

 In a statement to the Irish Examiner, the department said it and the centre “are continuing to work together on all of the issues raised”, but Mr O’Leary said this contradicted a July 9 departmental letter proposing “to facilitate a meeting … between (the CETB and the Life Centre)”.

“They’re fobbing us off on the CETB, and they’re not willing to work with us at all,” he said. He added that the Taoiseach and Pádraig O’Sullivan TD had been “hugely supportive” throughout, but he felt the department was not being straight with Mr Martin.

“It seems the Taoiseach is being told one thing and we’re being told another, and the department will not put their proposals in writing, because that would expose the truth.” 

The department reiterated its commitment “to ensuring a sustainable framework for the centre, in line with best educational practices” and acknowledged “the important work that is already been done [sic] by the centre”.

Describing the reference to “best educational practices” as “offensive” and implying the centre did not follow best practice, Mr O’Leary said that for 20 years the Life Centre had taken young people from “the scrapheap of the department’s failures” and helped them, but now, he believed, it was the department’s intention to “mainstream” the centre out of existence.

Mr O’Leary said the centre had received support from across the political spectrum.

“It means the world to know that public representatives, and the public, are on our side.” 

Similarly, he said, an online petition demanding Education Minister Norma Foley fund the Life Centre had given the centre’s staff and students a huge boost.