Challenges in education - Urgency and selfless focus are essential

ANYONE with the slightest interest in the role that education has to play in advancing this society and rebuilding our economy realises that considerable change is needed at nearly every level in our schools and colleges.

Just as in virtually every other sector of society, the options are limited and stark: change or fail and accept the unpalatable consequences of that failure.

Teachers and academics, politicians and parents, employers and a growing number of students realise that our system, though far better than many, must improve almost beyond all recognition if we are to create and sustain a modern, solvent European society.

Our teenagers — despite relentless grade inflation and changes in assessment methods — struggle to reach acceptable levels in maths and the sciences. Illiteracy is at startling levels among young adults. Universities complain that new students are unequal to the challenge of third-level courses. Irish universities are losing ground in international league tables. Drop-out rates raise all sorts of questions which will be exacerbated by the relentless increase in demand for third-level places.

Real reform seems far more difficult than it should be and decades of glad-handing have made teachers unions disproportionately influential. The Croke Park deal — and benchmarking — has not brought the kind of reform envisaged and must be considered a huge disappointment. Those who manage our education system have serious questions to answer in this area.

Funding is an issue with huge social and political implications. There is no easy answer but it seems inevitable, no matter how undesirable, that a third-level education will come with a new price tag in the not-too-distant future.

The power of teachers’ unions — and the indulgence of previous governments — can be seen in the fact that despite spending below the OECD average on education, Irish teachers are amongst the best paid in the world. None of these issues are new but Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has brought a sense of urgency to the challenge of confronting them. He has grasped nettles his predecessors willfully ignored.

School patronage is one of those and in the coming weeks more than 20,000 volunteers will be asked to serve on school boards for a four-year term. Hopefully this opportunity will be seized by committed, imaginative and energetic people who would relish the opportunity to help our schools be the best they can be. We should reconsider how these boards are elected as membership seems utterly in the gift of the status quo.

The hidebound sectionalism in our system can be seen in the fact that just two weeks ago senior decision makers in our second and third-level sectors came together for the first time. Under the aegis of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and the Higher Education Authority, and at the request of Mr Quinn, these groups, which should have been working hand-in-glove for decades, came together to discuss how students are selected for third-level education.

Thankfully, Mr Quinn has said that the time for reports and consultations has passed and that “a crisis is a good time for reform”. Everyone involved mustrealise the urgency required and look beyond their immediate sectional interests. Our competitors all around the world already have.