Educational disadvantage - Cancer of inequality fuels poverty

The report of the independent watchdog, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), on the failure of Government initiatives to improve educational prospects for children from poor backgrounds, is a damning indictment of the lack of co-ordination of school schemes.

These findings echo recent research showing the gap in literacy between children from disadvantaged areas compared with their middle-class peers had widened between 1998 and 2004.

Further illustrating Ireland’s failure to tackle this cancer of social inequality, the C&AG mirrors the 2003 findings of a Government appointed committee that criticised bungling in how educational disadvantage is tackled.