A lot done since 1916 but a lot more to do for the children of 2006

I DON’T want to labour the point, but this is the week when we’re going to be hearing an awful lot about the anniversary of 1916.

It's 90 years since the Rising 90 years of change and development and growth, with more than a few setbacks on the way. But at the end of that 90 years, we're rich. We're successful. We've made it.

When I was a kid and we were celebrating the 50th anniversary, we were all made to memorise the Proclamation of Independence. Nowadays, I can still remember bits and pieces of it, as most of us can. It's when you try to compare the Proclamation to the country we see all around us today that you realise that some things, anyway, have changed.

For example, the 'right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies' hasn't turned out to be quite so 'sovereign and indefeasible' as the authors of the Proclamation intended. One wonders how the authors of the Proclamation might have felt about the building up of Aer Lingus only to sell it to the highest bidder. And already in Ireland there are a great many children for whom citizenship will always be an aspiration, rather than an entitlement, even for many of those born here. We have a great many children now whose colour would not have been familiar to the men and women of 1916 and whose first language certainly isn't either of the languages of the 'dead generations' from whom we received our 'old tradition of nationhood'.

So it may be an even bigger challenge than we think, as we celebrate that anniversary, to live up to the famous injunction in the Proclamation that binds the Republic to 'guarantee religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens', and declares its resolve to 'pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally '.

But one thing we can be sure of. The children of Ireland have become citizens and residents of a very affluent republic indeed. Already one of the richest countries in the world, by the time we celebrate the centenary of the Proclamation there will be no country in the world richer than us, on present trends.

But unless we correct some of the undesirable trends that also exist in Ireland, by then we will also be one of the most divided countries in the world, divided between an increasingly affluent majority, and an increasingly poor and alienated minority.

Our wealth as a country enables us to take a lot for granted. And there are all sorts of things that you want to be able to take for granted if you're a parent that your kids will be safe at all times, that they'll be happy and that they'll be able to cope with the inevitable setbacks that life throws up.

There are even more fundamental things that they will be able to read and write and that they won't be bullied in school and even that they'll finish school.

But there are an awful lot of families in Ireland where that can't be taken for granted.

Every time I write a column for the Irish Examiner, I take it for granted that there'll be some people who want to read it, and some who don't, some who agree with me and even a few who don't.

The one thing that never occurs to me is that there may be people out there who'd like to read the column, or other bits of the newspaper, but can't.

And yet there are. Illiteracy among adults exists in Ireland, at much higher levels than we care to admit. And that's not just a generational thing. It applies to the kids, too. About one in every seven young people leave school in Ireland without a Leaving Cert, and one in about 30 have no qualification at all. Early school leaving is estimated to affect at least 18% of young people in Ireland.

The incidence of literacy difficulties among young people is staggeringly high, with 11% of 15-year-olds only able to complete the most basic of reading tasks. That's 10% across all income groups.

ALMOST one-third of pupils in poorer areas suffer severe literacy difficulties, and this rises to 50% in some of the more marginalised schools. The problem of early school leaving and literacy is especially acute for travellers and other ethnic minorities who experience significant levels of absenteeism.

This is a potentially endless cycle. And the way we spend money on education almost seems to guarantee that we will never break the cycle. We spend almost nothing at all on early childhood development, less on primary than on secondary, and less on secondary than on third-level education.

But what we spend on education is only one of the factors. There are still kids who go to school hungry.

There are still families that can't afford school uniforms or books, that dread the news of a school outing, that have nowhere to offer their kids to do homework. You'll find in a lot of schools that the poorer kids, the ones without designer shoes or an iPod, get bullied. They learn to hate school and can't wait to get away from it.

And you'll never guess the ones who leave school early, who feel a failure all through their years in school and learn to hate the system, often end up as the kids who terrorise the neighbourhood. They end up as the teenagers who sneer at the kids still going to school. And they can end up as the fathers who have no respect for their children's education.

Breaking that cycle is possible. It needs investment and staff resources. New programmes are being developed all the time that concentrate on literacy or on enabling kids to mix better with other kids. These programmes work in fact, they're producing exciting results.

A long-term study in the United States, conducted over 40 years, demonstrated that for every dollar spent on good quality early years education, the State is repaid $17 over time. Part of that repayment comes from the savings made on the prisons bill, because that's a part of the vicious circle that education really helps to break.

Apart from the fact that it's cruel, educational disadvantage doesn't make sense.

The more we're prepared to invest in giving kids the best possible start they can get, the more there will be in it for us. The more we can ensure that kids enjoy education and feel they're growing and developing, the more likely they'll spend a lifetime in productive employment. The more we can help youngsters to make good choices around educational opportunities, the more certain we can be they won't be terrorising the neighbourhood.

For all those reasons, eliminating educational disadvantage isn't just about 'do-gooding'. It's actually a no-brainer. Opening educational opportunities for everyone and helping kids to get the most from them, is the best guarantee we have of sustaining our prosperity into the future.