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.

The only positive aspect of this situation is that long overdue measures are finally being put in place this week in order to resolve a chronic systems failure militating against young people hoping to climb the educational ladder.

As far back as 2003, Professor Áine Hyland of UCC, who headed the Statutory Educational Disadvantage Committee, spoke of duplicity and lack of co-ordination in school schemes around the country.

According to the Comptroller and Auditor General, John Purcell, &the State ran “a patchwork of schemes each attempting to address aspects of disadvantage”.

He found the systems set up to measure these initiatives, including some since the early 1990s, were underdeveloped and need to be established on a proper footing. Moreover, targets are required for literacy and numeracy at national level, as well as individual schools.

Despite spending €61.8 million in the 2003/04 school year on four main schemes in primary and second-level schools, the spending watchdog found they had little impact on improving literacy standards. The bill for 848 primary teachers and home school coordinators was €44.2m.

He also found the School Completion Programme was not in place in 25 highly disadvantaged schools, where only 20% to 30% of pupils were targeted.

Despite the scale of this problem, the Government moved slowly. By the time Education Minister Noel Dempsey left the department in 2004, he had failed to come up with any conclusive plan of action.

At long last, progress is taking place thanks to Mary Hanafin, who ordered a nationwide school review to see how the crisis could be resolved shortly after taking over the education portfolio, two years ago this month.

She has since beefed up the existing scheme, selecting 875 schools in a vigorous programme to combat educational disadvantage. Hopefully, the positive effects of this action will be felt during the coming school year.

Ideally, Mr Purcell should revisit this vexed issue to ensure the measures being put in place by Ms Hanafin are having the desired effect. Otherwise, his valuable work and taxpayers’ money could be wasted.

Meantime, there is an urgent need to significantly increase staffing levels at the National Educational Welfare Board. This body is responsible for tackling absenteeism at school but its intervention often comes too late for many pupils, according to the C&AG.

Recognising the sheer scale of this social problem, the INTO, representing 27,000 primary school teachers, is calling for major increases in the funding of schemes being rolled out by the minister. At the coal face of the problem, teachers encounter illiteracy and other symptoms of disadvantage on a daily basis in the classroom.

Unless State support systems are more focused on bridging the yawning gulf of educational disadvantage, which is both a glaring indicator and cause of long-term poverty in Ireland, the lives of thousands of vulnerable children will continue to be blighted.