The iPod generation is showing lots of promise, but many won’t make it

ONE point two million. That’s how many children there are in Ireland (if you count 18-year-olds as children). Just under half are girls, and they constitute about 30% of our population.

According to the last census, about 90% of them were born in Ireland. They are being born into smaller families the average size of a family has halved in 30 years, from four children to two.

I know all this because I was asked to speak about 'The Child in the 21st Century' to the Irish Primary Principals Network last week. You might have noticed the Minister for Education on television at the weekend urging them to stop moaning about their lot.

I think she must have been at a different conference far from moaning, the people I met were committed and concerned professionals, determined to get the most from the education system for the kids they worked with.

It was when I began researching the subject about which I was asked to speak that I discovered there is actually a wealth of information, in all sorts of different places, that adds up to a fascinating picture of our kids. It's a good news, bad news kind of picture that makes you wonder sometimes how well the next few generations are going to do.

We know that one in seven children grow up with one parent only, usually a mother, and that those children are at a significantly greater risk of poverty. And we know, too, that one in seven of all children in Ireland now lives in consistent poverty. There is, of course, significant overlap between those figures.

On the good news side, more than 80% of boys and girls report themselves as being in good or excellent health. The 2002 Health Behaviour of Schoolchildren study reported that Irish schoolchildren score highly on the happiness index, with around 90% of them reporting that they feel quite happy or very happy with life. They are idealistic, with thousands of them being willing to take part in voluntary activity. They are close to their parents, and close to siblings.

They are key consumers, or at least a key target for those interested in marketing. The published marketing studies almost all refer to the 18-to-24 age category, not children but still very much the next generation. Nine in every 10 young people have their own mobile phones and they send an average of 37 text messages a week. They tend to be somewhat disparaging of the interest of other young people in brands, but more than half derive a strong sense of belonging themselves from the ownership and use of branded products.

The iPod generation needs to own trainers with a logo on them, telephones capable of doing almost anything, and their own personal DVD players. They might be taking a lead from their parents in that regard none of us seems able to watch a television any more unless the screen is as wide as a house.

They are starved of time, these young people, although by no means starved of alcohol, with plenty of manufacturers willing to invest large amounts of money in inventing and marketing drinks specifically for them. Some of the alcohol manufacturers are a bit queasy about referring to their marketing plans for children, so they tend to refer to children as MLDAs (Minimum Legal Drinking Age). Many young people, of course, start drinking long before they reach the so-called MLDA, and around one in ten young people reported taking an illegal drug, usually cannabis or ecstasy, within the last year.

Have these young people ambitions? The marketers certainly hope so. Based on the surveys they have concluded, more than half want to own a car soon. Slightly fewer than that want to own a credit card.

Sadly, only around one in 14 intend to join a political party around a third of the number who want to experience bungee-jumping.

Nearly 200,000 children in Ireland suffer some form of mental distress. One in 10 suffers from mental illness severe enough to cause them some level of impairment, and one in 50 suffers severe and disabling mental illness. Between 1998 and 2000, for instance, 2,650 children and teenagers were admitted to adult psychiatric hospitals and units 200 of them were 15 years of age and younger. Most starkly of all, the incidence of suicide among young people has risen by a quarter in the last 10 years. In the last 20 years or so, 55 Irish children between the ages of five and 14 took their own lives.

IT'S a mixed picture, isn't it? All the studies of children show there is a strong link between education and a variety of different levels of fulfilment. At least our education system is geared to maximising the chances and opportunities for children, right? Alas, not so.

Almost 1,000 pupils per year fail to make the transition between primary and secondary school. One in three children in disadvantaged areas suffers severe literacy problems, three times the national average. Early school-leaving is estimated to affect nearly one in five young people in Ireland. Fifteen percent of young people leave school without a Leaving Certificate and 3% with no qualification at all. One in five students from disadvantaged areas miss more than 20 days in primary and secondary school in a given year.

Ireland had a pupil-to-teacher ratio of 19.5 at primary education level in 2001/2002. This was the third highest ratio in the EU. We spent 5,000 per pupil at primary level, 6,788 at secondary level and 8,914 at third level in the 2003 academic year.

Regular national assessments of English reading levels in Irish primary schools have been conducted since 1972. The results of the most recent test carried out in 2004 were recently released. This has concluded that little or no change in national reading standards has occurred since 1980.

In particular, the levels of reading difficulties in areas and schools designated as disadvantaged remains consistently at 30%.

Children from lone parent families, from large families, from families who had medical cards, from the Traveller community, from families with unemployed parents and whose parents themselves have low educational achievement are consistently represented among that 30%.

In fact they are children with the same family profile as children found to be in consistent poverty.

One striking bit of additional background is that most of the children of Ireland are citizens of a very affluent republic indeed.

There are, of course (and there will be more) a great many children in Ireland for whom citizenship will be an aspiration rather than an entitlement, even if they have been born here. There are, and there will be more, children here whose skin colour and whose language would not have been familiar to the men and women of 1916 when they pledged to cherish all the children of the nation equally.

Still, for the last 90 years, we've been committed, at least rhetorically, to doing just that. Have we done OK? Or is it possible, in this really rich country of ours, that we could do a bit better?