Where the Education Cutbacks are Hitting.

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Tuesday March 02, 2004 16:13 by Gaz

Despite the Minister for Education Noel Dempsey's repeated mantraof social inclusion and widening access to education, the government has systematically targeted the most disadvantaged sectors of Irish society and reneged n virtually all its election promises by introducing cutback after devastating cutback. Since being re-elected in 2002 there has been a constant erosion of funding for schemes aimed at assisting those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Department of Social and Family Affairs decided to discontinue summer payment of the Back to Education Allowance (BTEA) while also increasing the number of months a person had to claim assistance from 6 months to 15 months before being able to claim the allowance. The BTEA was set up to help the long-term unemployed and people from disadvantaged groups to enter third level education. Students in receipt of Disability Allowance, Blind Persons Pension and Invalidity Pension were all hit.

In August the government decided to slash the budget allocated to Vocational Education Committees (VECS) for the provision of childcare for people on Vocational Training Opportunities Scheme (VTOS), Youthreach and Senior Traveller Schemes by 37% nationally. These cutbacks came despite the fact that the government signed up to commitments under the Lisbon Process in 2000 to increase childcare places and in their own reports have identified lack of childcare to be a barrier to equality especially t single mothers and low income families. This penny-pinching cutback came as a serious blow to the hopes and aspirations of almost 1,500 students who relied on their local Vocational Educational Committees to provide childcare services or their children. Without childcare, VTOS area non-starter for a people dependent on one parent family payments. VECs also operate Youthreach services and Traveller education programmes, in which some of the participants are as young as 15. The current situation means that some childcare centres are planning to close, as they are unable to operate on this substantially reduced level of funding. Perhaps the worst aspect of this cutback is that effects two generations at
the same time.

Not content with targeting travellers, single mothers, low-income families and disabled people, the government also targeted children by slashing the funding for access schemes designed to decrease the numbers of children dropping out of school. Ignoring international research, the governments own report from Action Group on access to Third Level Education and Irelands foremost researcher on access to education Dr. Pat Clancy, €6 million was cut from the School Retention Initiative and €5 million was cut from the Access Programme. Although research shows that repeated truancy is a direct route to an exit from education at an early age, the government cut the budget for the national Education Welfare board which was set up under the Education ( Welfare Act), 2000 and given the responsibility for school attendance matters throughout the country from €13million to €3.2 million.

The main threath to education now comes in the form of privatisation. The Higher Education Athourity (HEA) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have already stated their belief in the return of fees and the privatisation of third level colleges. The threath of privatisation is aslo coming from the EU in the form of the Bologna Process. The Bologna Process, which is the most important and wide ranging reform of higher education in Europe and aims to establish a European Higher Education Area by 2010 in which staff and students can move with ease and have fair recognition of their qualifications and is also likely lead to the reintroduction of third level fees if adopted. The main threath however comes from the World Trade Organistaion in the form of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which has an agenda of sweeping deregulation and privatisation of services. The implications for Higher Education are enormous .The GATS agreement, according to the European Commission, is "first and foremost an instrument forthe benefit of business". The small print of the GATS agreement makes it clear that public education will not be exempt from this ambitious liberalisation agenda.

Proponents of tuition fees and privatisation point to the fact of a their is a lack of funding for third level instituitons and that the abolition of fees (although it now costs €750 to enter college, almost twice as much sine FF /PDs came to power) has failed to significantly increase the numbers of people from lower socio-economic backrounds entering into third level education. Althought this argument fails to acknowledge that barriers to education arise as soon as a child enters the education system and not when, or if they obtain their leaving cert, it also fails to stand up to scrutiny. When Donogh O'Malle, abolished fees for second-level education in 1967 it was seen as a gift to the middle classes. Working class and the children of the unemployed rarely made it to Leaving Certificate level. The pattern did not change straight away, it took decades before completing second-level became the norm across most of Irish society. The abolition of 3rd level fees in 1996, by Niamh Bhreathnach was a progression in access to education which built on O'Malley's decision. The results of ther decision may take decades to be fully apparent. However, Patrick Clancy's detailed research on who goes to college already shows that patterns are changing and that those in the low-to-middle income bracket, whose children's participation had been dropping, are now attending 3rd level in increasing percentages. Senator Joanna Tuffey, has carried out a study of Clancy's statistics and it is clear that the introduction of free fees has turned around the participation of this PAYE sector of the population who have paid so hugely into the growth of the economy.

Access to education, at all levels, is a right which a good society should provide for its citizens through the tax system. There are some services that society must provide as of right and pay for through taxes and access to Education is one of them. If we truly want to widen access to education then students have to force their agenda onto the government and the media. The debate which is usually centred on fees must be widened to include all barriers to education which arise as soon as a child enters primary school, not simply once the have received their leaving certificate. Funding for school retention initiatives and access schemes to help people from poorer socio-economic backgrounds in conjunction with grants and free fees is the best way of widening access to education. However, it is not merely the government we have to convince but the EU and the World Trade Organisation. The combination of an ineffective national students union and limited grassroots student activity may mean that the argument is lost.