Irish Examiner view: 'Voluntary' school payment practice must stop

It emerged this week that several schools in Cork are seeking funds from parents of children to whom they offered school places, despite legislation outlawing the practice. Picture: Stock

Parents and guardians all over the country will be familiar with the voluntary contributions sought by secondary schools, an expense which pops up when kids are dusting off their uniforms to return to classrooms in September.

The temptation is to put quotation marks around the word voluntary, given the general expectation that families will provide the money, but a story here this week casts some doubt over the appropriateness of some requests for funds.

It emerged this week that several schools in Cork are seeking funds from parents of children to whom they offered school places, despite legislation outlawing the practice. The schools solicit contributions to offset various costs — assessments, an induction day, and administration in one case, a “voluntary registration fee” in another, while yet another school was seeking a “student services charge” towards items such as insurance, locker rental, exam costs, and school travel for sports teams.

The Department of Education told this newspaper the Education (Admissions to schools) Act 2018 “explicitly prohibits” the charging of admission and enrolment fees for admission to, or for continued enrolment in, a school.

It is understandable that parents keen to have their children enrolled in their secondary school of choice would be reticent about refusing to pay such fees, but it is unacceptable that schools should flout the law like this.

The various stratagems and reasons used to justify the charges are nothing to be proud of, particularly when such contributions have the potential to put significant financial pressure on parents.

It would be no surprise to hear the practice defended on the general grounds of underfunding in education. In some cases this is completely spurious as a rebuttal, as some schools which seek voluntary contributions are more than adequately resourced. Should schools which charge fees often running to thousands of euro and which are also funded by the State, through the Department of Education, also seek
financial contributions from parents?

There is no debate about schools seeking fees to enrol children. It is prohibited by legislation and should stop immediately.

Stronger security than 'Louvre' 

Readers will be aware of the heist at the Louvre in Paris recently, a daring theft with all the hallmarks of a caper movie.

Thieves used the extendable ladder on a flat-bed truck to break into the museum in broad daylight, then absconded with historic items of jewellery worth millions of euro.

Investigations are ongoing and arrests have been made, with individuals allegedly involved in the theft taken into custody. Just to add to the sense of a knockabout thriller, one of those individuals has been described as a body-builder and urban motocross star with a large social media following.

Inevitably there has been a review of security measures at the Louvre, and the sheer lack of CCTV cameras around the perimeter of the museum has been identified as a major weakness; the fact that one of those cameras filmed the suspects as they arrived, but no action was taken, has also been the subject of much discussion. While the museum began a security audit a decade ago, all of the recommended upgrades will not be completed until 2032.

However, nothing has caught the public imagination like the revelations from the French newspaper Liberation. It reported this week that confidential documents show that the password for the Louvre’s video surveillance system was ‘LOUVRE’.

The newspaper has also reported that the password to access another key part of the security apparatus was ‘THALES’. This may at least have the appearance of obscurity until Liberation pointed out that the software concerned was produced by the tech company Thales.

While this story has an appealing element of farce to it, readers can also take it as a timely warning. Online commerce will soon hit a peak, between Black Friday and then Christmas fast approaching.

For those online sprees, consumers would be well advised to check up on their own cybersecurity measures, such as password strength. And not to be as lazy in that regard as s the operators of the Louvre.

Irish education action plan

This week, education minister Helen McEntee unveiled new policies for Irish-medium education and an action plan for Irish in English-medium schools.

Significant work is under way in this area. Gaeloideachas has been funded to develop a resource to help parents support their children’s learning of Irish.

Dublin City Council is involved in a pilot scheme with a cluster of gaelscoileanna, working together to build and support Irish-speaking communities. An Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltacht agus Gaelscolaíochta alongside Tide have been authorised to appoint additional staff to support schools, and a taskforce on models of provision for Irish-medium education has been established.

The action plan for the Irish language is aimed at all primary and post-primary schools that teach through English, comprising more than 900,000 students. 

It is not clear, however, how this relates to a survey of 826,000 parents which was announced this week by the Department of Education. The survey will focus on primary school ethos — whether parents want religious or non-denominational education, for instance — but it will also ask parents whether they want their children educated through English or Irish. Will the new action plan be affected by that survey’s results?

A question to be answered. Ceist le freagairt.

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