Further education - Vital sector is shamefully neglected

IT would be hard to exaggerate the importance of further education as a major source of lifelong learning and a key tool in providing skilled and trained workers for Ireland’s expanding workforce.

Yet, despite its inestimable contribution to the social and industrial fabric of the nation, the Government is shamefully neglecting this vital component of the education system.

As with so many other spheres of activity, we lag far behind other European states by failing to establish a distinct further education sector with the funding, resources and structures that implies.

Typifying an administration long on promises but short on action, the Coalition was actively pledging support and funding for further education when, in reality, State investment in the third-level research programme was put on hold for two years.

At the same time, ministers were proclaiming the urgency of creating a top-class research and development sector to play a central role in driving the country’s economic growth.

A damning illustration of the Government’s masterly inactivity can be seen on ministerial shelves where a thick layer of dust is building on a plethora of official reports, including the highly significant McIver Report, calling for greater focus on the economic importance of ‘upskilling’ the workforce, providing continuous training and education, and enhancing lifelong learning.

Notwithstanding the Government’s frustrating disregard for such an important educational tool, thousands of people are being produced by hundreds of colleges and schools, bringing considerable added benefits to local business and industry.

The corporate world owes a big debt to institutions which, against overwhelming odds, continue to produce highly skilled and trained people without gaining anything like the resources and support from Government which they fully deserve.

Charging the Coalition with rank hypocrisy, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI), one of the main teacher unions, has embarked on a campaign of action to highlight the problem.

Teachers are so outraged they are considering going on strike if the Government fails to deliver long overdue funding in next week’s Budget.

Central to the TUI’s intensive campaign of action is the fundamental demand that the recommendations of the McIver Report be implemented without further delay.

Commissioned in 2003 by the Department of Education, the report calls for major restructuring of both the colleges and the further education and Post Leaving Certificate courses they offer.

Some sense of the national importance of further education can be gleaned from the fact that around 30,000 students are immersed in courses in a wide range of disciplines at more than 200 schools and colleges up and down the country.

Given the enormous popularity and relevance of this work, the TUI can be forgiven for griping. Its complaints are rooted in the fact that in last month’s estimates of Government expenditure for 2006, the Department of Education did not assign any money towards the €48 million needed to implement the changes sought by the McIver study. Understandably, TUI president Paddy Healy condemns this scenario as intolerable.

Putting it succinctly, he describes as “hollow” the avowed commitment of Education Minister Mary Hanafin to tackling disadvantage “when the area providing most second chance education opportunities to those who would otherwise be let down by the system continues to be overlooked”.

Not mincing his words, Mr Healy describes the lack of investment in the sector as “immoral in these days of unprecedented budget surpluses”.

Thanks to Government neglect, this hugely important area which has contributed so much to personal advancement, communal development and economic progress, has become the Cinderella of the education system.