Underfunded education system - School bully: Parents hit hard by costs

In September, 2013, the Department of Education and Skills introduced new procedures requiring all schools to formally adopt and implement an anti-bullying policy within the framework of their overall code of conduct.

Bullying is defined in the department’s guidelines as“unwanted negative behaviour — verbal, psychological or physical — conducted by an individual or group against another person (or persons) and which is repeated over time”.

As the new school year begins and in light of our report today, which sheds light on financial pressures being put on parents, it is worthwhile to consider the types of behaviour that fit the department’s bullying template.

How about constant and insistent demands that read like letters from a debt collector for parents to pay the so-called ‘voluntary contribution’ for each child’s education?

How about a letter to a parent from a school principal warning that “we will not be in a position to bring pupil’s [sic] on school trips, sports trips, etc as these are subsidized by the school”?

How about: “Children are not allowed lockers until the contribution is paid. There is no choice but to pay it”?

How about a primary school child being humiliated and embarrassed in front of the class?

At a hearing about school costs held yesterday by the Oireachtas Education Committee, independent senator Lynn Ruane described being told of a teacher saying to a child:

“It’s children’s allowance day tomorrow, so why don’t you tell your mother to pay it out of that?”

All of the above are commonplace examples of how parents and their children are being bullied and harassed by school management into paying for the shortfall in capitation grants under the Free Education Scheme.

Watching your child start or go back to school should be a happy occasion for parents, but for many thousands, it is a time of misery and financial worry.

Barnardos’ Annual School Costs Survey for 2018 reveals that parents continue to subsidise an underfunded education system. It also shows that 11% of primary school parents and 21% of secondary school parents are forced to borrow money to cover school costs.

It is now almost exactly two years since Minister Richard Bruton launched his Action Plan for Education. Its stated aim was to make “the Irish education and training service the best in Europe by 2026” and establish “a framework that helps schools reduce costs bearing on parents”.

By continuing to underfund education, the Government is contributing to the violation by schools of its own anti-bullying policy. It is also besmirching the memory of Donagh O’Malley, the dynamic minister who introduced free post-primary education in 1966.

At the time, 30% of children left education after primary school. His vision laid the foundation for economic success and gave hope to a new generation, memorably described by poet Theo Dorgan as “O’Malley’s children”. Sadly, the same cannot be said of O’Malley’s children’s children.