Money decides who goes to college

Should there be a league table to identify the feeder schools for prisons? Why not? This week, we had the annual league table to identify the feeder schools for higher-level education, writes Michael Clifford

This type of table is supposed to inform parents and pupils about which schools excel at producing high academic results. The inference is that the quality of education at these schools is somehow superior. Maybe the teaching is better. Or maybe the pupils who attend those schools have sharper minds. Whatever, the inference is that these schools are somehow ‘the best’.

By the same logic, surely the worst schools in the State are those that produce inmates for detention facilities. There is an obvious correlation between low educational attainment and the kind of criminality that results in incarceration. (Plenty of criminality goes on among those with high educational attainment, it just doesn’t result in incarceration.)

For instance, figures produced by the Irish Penal Reform Trust, last year, showed that the majority of prisoners never sat a State exam and more than half left school by the age of 15. Why not show up the schools that produced such a drain on the resources of the State?

Of course, the notion is both crazy and offensive, but is it any more crazy and offensive than the annual pretence that the league table for so-called feeder schools reflects quality of education?

The tables produced this week showed, for instance, that in the most affluent parts of Dublin, progression to third-level was around 90%. In the most disadvantaged areas, this dipped as low as 7%.

Among the various comments about the tables, perhaps the only thing of value was uttered by John MacGabhann, the general secretary of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland.

This is the middle-class establishment looking in the mirror and saying: ‘mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all’,” he told the Irish Times.

“They send more to third-level than others because of economic factors. Of course, the lists reflect back to them the value of their own choices.”

Mr MacGabhann’s observations would be a good place to start in any proper assessment of rates of progression to third-level.

Instead of a league table of schools, we should just have a map. Perhaps the best indicator of progression is the house prices in a particular area. We should also dismiss any notion that the tables reflect in any way the ability of students in a particular area.

Acknowledging this would at least inject some honesty into any discussion on third-level education. In that vein, the question arises as to whether enough is being done to ensure that there is a level playing field in which all the nation’s children could aspire to a high level of education.

Few would argue that the answer is in the affirmative. The colleges have made some efforts, with initiatives like access programmes targeted at areas where there is no tradition of third-level education.

Dublin City University, on the northside of the city, is one of the better examples of this. Last year, 10.4% of first-year students at the college came through its access programme.

Figures from DCU also illustrate that drop-out rates among access-programme students are less than in the general student population.

On average, 97% of access students at the university graduate with a second-class honours or above degree.

Small incisions into the problem of education apartheid are thus made. But the odds are completely stacked against those from the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder in making it into a university.

Acknowledging that truth might also inject some honesty into any debate on the funding of third-level education. The sector is heavily subsidised by the exchequer. As such, everybody is paying for a standard of education that greatly enhances quality of life, but from which those from disadvantaged areas are excluded.

For instance, the parents who shelled out €6,000 per annum for a fee-paying school must only pay half of that, through a registration fee for their offspring’s third-level education. The remainder of the cost is footed by everybody, including the low-skilled worker whose offspring has no chance of availing of the subsidy.

Beyond the fee-paying schools, there is the grinds industry. Grinds cost money, but also represent an investment. If you can afford to pay for grinds, you will be in a position to fully avail of the subsidy on offer at third-level.

Acknowledging this reality is unpalatable for most political parties. To do so would involve discommoding the great middle swathe of the electorate. Instead, these parties adopt the most transparently fraudulent position by proclaiming that free third-level education means throwing open the doors to all sections of society.

That was the guff propagated by the Labour party, when it abolished third-level fees, in a coalition government, in 1996. They said it was all about equality in education.

In reality, it was about shoring up the party’s liberal, middle-class base, handing back a few bob for the extra car or holiday.

As was predicted at the time, the move did nothing to widen access to third-level. This week’s league tables demonstrate that, 23 years on, in a country that has, in some ways, gone through serious development, nothing has changed when it comes to inequality in third-level education.

The purported reasoning behind the abolition of fees no longer matters. What matters now is what we have we hold. People expect free third-level education (apart from a €3,000 registration fee paid by around half of the State’s students).

These realities are being studiously avoided by the body politic, as it purports to address the crisis in third-level funding. An expert group, headed up by former trade union figure Peter Cassells, reported over two years ago on how the crisis should be tackled.

Three options were suggested, each of which would discommode the great middle swathe of the electorate that benefits most from the current, redundant funding model.

Since Cassells’ report was published, both the Government and the Oireachtas education committee have passed the issue back and forth like an unexploded bomb. Nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news.

Nobody wants to explain that there is an inherent unfairness in a system that subsidies some to a great extent, and which excludes others on the basis of their postcode.