Mo has passed on but we should not forget her lessons on learning

I WANTED to write about education this week, and it was Mo Mowlam’s death that reminded me. I asked her once, if she could pick her favourite job in the cabinet, what would it be.

Naturally, she said it would be Northern Ireland secretary, but if not that, she said, then definitely education.

It mightn’t be the highest profile job in Britain, but if you are committed to building equality in society, she said it’s the only one worth having.

She told me that the first time I met her. She wasn’t well-known then, but her boss (a recently elected leader of the opposition), and mine, were having a tête-à-tête prior to a full meeting.

Mo had taken over the job of spokesperson on Northern Ireland from Kevin McNamara, and it was a move that had already generated some controversy, especially among nationalists.

They saw the demotion of McNamara as a sign that Tony Blair was willing to appease unionist concerns - surely an irony in light of the fact that it was unionist insistence that later saw Mo removed from the job of Northern Ireland secretary.

Over the years I knew her I came to regard Mo Mowlam as a unique politician. I know unique is a much over-used word, but she fitted the description perfectly. Informal and breezy, she started the first full meeting I ever attended with her by removing her wig and demanding a cigarette. She never hesitated to call a spade a spade - or often, something rather saltier.

But her commitment to her job was total, her understanding of complexity immense. Although she often broke the rules, she knew every rule she was breaking intimately. In that sense, she was a bit like the Picasso of the peace process - an artist immensely schooled in traditional methods, and determined to create a new style and language to communicate not just the ideas behind the process, but also the urgency.

There were other things about her that were perhaps not so obvious to us, who saw her only in an Irish context. That famous standing ovation she got at the British Labour Party conference, which seemed at the time to discomfit Tony Blair, would have come as no surprise to anyone who knew of her work within the party. Uniquely (that word again) among cabinet ministers, she would spend all her time at conferences on the floor, chatting with delegates, visiting stands, attending fringe meetings, arguing policy with anyone who wanted to, often late into the night. She was a delegate’s delegate, loved even by those who disagreed with her.

And it was exactly the same during elections. She would go to every no-hope constituency in the country, boosting morale and talking the party up in the local media, totally accessible to anyone who needed her support. It’s no wonder she got that standing ovation, and no wonder that there is a hollow feeling at the centre of the Labour Party in Britain this week. They may still have brains and brawn, but you can’t help feeling they were relying too heavily on Mo for heart. Incidentally, the last time I spoke her, and it was clear her health was failing, she told me she wouldn’t “be around” when the next Labour leader was chosen. Tony will go on for a long time yet, she said (this was just before the last election in Britain, when the media was united in predicting that, win or lose, Tony Blair was on his last hurrah). But, she added, it wouldn’t be Gordon Brown who’d succeed him. By the time Tony has done his stint, she said, Gordon would be burned out, and the party would pick Charles Clark as the next prime minister.

One half of that prediction has turned out right - it will be interesting to see if the other half turns out to be correct as well. Certainly, although little enough is known about Clark here, he is the only member of the British cabinet who can match Tony Blair for toughness.

Back to education. Mo Mowlam was right. Education is the key to equality.

Oddly enough, it has never really been seen that way in Ireland. The education portfolio here has a much higher profile than it does in Britain, and that has been the case for at least 40 years. The quality of that profile, and the central role that education plays in our politics and daily lives, is one of the main reasons why we have had a Celtic Tiger.

Indeed, when the history of this period is written, it may come to be seen as the central reason.

THAT springs from a perception that education is the engine of growth rather than equality. And it is that perception that has encouraged us to cling for so long to the outdated, nasty, and grossly unfair points system we have put in place. We are now at the stage where the points system in Ireland is not only an increasing impediment to equality, but is rapidly becoming a barrier to economic and social progress as well.

For example, it is patently absurd that a student who wants to be a doctor must secure 590 Leaving Cert points. At one end of the scale, it means that, increasingly, only kids whose parents can afford whatever additional costs are involved, including the extra tuition fees involved in weekend grinds, will end up in the medical profession. It will become, even more than it is, a class-based profession, increasingly closed to those who don’t have money and connections (precisely what the points system was supposed to have done away with).

At another level, the points system applied to the medical profession will ensure that we are deprived of good doctors - because there is no sustainable argument that academic attainment at the age of 18 is a guarantee of a good doctor in later life.

The points system is, of course, a crude mechanism aimed at regulating the law of supply and demand. The reason points are high for medicine is not because standards must be maintained - it’s because there aren’t enough training places. And that has another consequence. If we’re not training enough doctors, we’re guaranteeing that access to healthcare will never be affordable, and will always be a growing burden on the state. A system that guarantees, into perpetuity, that entrance to the professions will be limited to one set of standards only because of the desire of vested interests to keep the number of entrants to a minimum is a barrier to efficiency and access.

It is long past time that we had a root-and-branch overhaul of the system - and that, of course, must be accompanied by investment in additional third-level places in all the areas where we need more qualified people. If it ever had value, the points system has long outlived its usefulness. I reckon I know the approach someone like Mo Mowlam would take to the system had she ever got the chance, and I know the language she would have used to describe its unfairness. But I can’t use words like that here!