Investing in children - Oversight essential on €600m plan

It is almost beyond comprehension that any entity should pay €600m to 4,300 businesses — an average of €140,000 — and not thoroughly access the effectiveness of that investment.

That the multimillion-euro investment was made by the State in pre-school education at private childcare centres points to a bizarre and dysfunctional absence of public accountability. That only 15 of the 4,300 businesses to benefit from that funding were inspected to assess its effectiveness, confirms we have not learned, despite the multibillion-euro lessons forced on this society, that light-touch regulation is a poor substitute for formal, mandatory systems of assessment. That kind of free-range regime also facilitates the grant-friendly manipulation of creche records like that exposed by the impressive and shocking RTÉ documentary last week.

This systems failure was acknowledged by senior Department of Education officials when one wrote: “There has not as yet been a focus on accountability for educational outcomes in ECCE [early childhood care and education] commensurate with the level of investment in early years’ education by the State.” In plainer terms, that means we’ve spent €600m but have no idea if anything has been improved or achieved by that investment.

On taking office more than two years ago Education Minister Ruairí Quinn was assured that initial inspections were scheduled for that autumn. It is tragic though sadly unsurprising that inspections are not yet at a level that can inspire any degree of confidence and that new national education standards will not be applied until next year. This prevarication continues despite the fact that the outline of an early learning curriculum was defined almost four years ago. It would be wise though to celebrate the arrival of the inspectors at childcare centres rather be too certain that the 2014 schedule will actually be met.

Even allowing for the fact that the introduction of a free year of early learning services for around 70,000 toddlers is a relatively recent development and that it will evolve over time this seems almost a wanton disregard in how terribly scarce public funds are used.

This failure, and how sad it is to have to use that word in connection with such a badly needed and progressive scheme, is all the more galling because many of those looking for work would be only too happy to be involved. This could be made possible by one of the free training schemes like Springboard and other “labour market activation” programmes announced almost on a monthly basis by Government. These are already provided to support for-profit businesses so there should be no problem about extending that principle to the childcare sector.

Unfortunately, this episode characterises the snail’s pace of development and reform in our public affairs and it is no longer acceptable. The really disappointing thing is that the minister and his officials must know that, but they seem unable to generate the momentum this project — and the expenditure of such resources — demands. As many a frustrated and disappointed teacher has written in school reports over the years — “could do better”. Could do a lot, lot better really.