1.1 At the present time, control of primary and secondary education lies in the hands of the owners of schools, who are placed under pressure by the Department of Education to conform with certain criteria. The management of education does not lie in the hands of parents, or of their representatives. The main exception to this arrangement is in the vocational sector, which comprises a minority of overall provision. The vocational sector has had to develop in a distorted direction because of the insistence of private providers of education in the past that certain parts of the educational system be reserved to them.
1.2 The present method of running education may have been satisfactory in the past. Parents paid through parish dues for the education of their children. That arrangement indicated social support for the Church as managers and providers of education. Parents' dues have declined as a means of financing education, however, and if the Church had to rely on the contributions it currently collects from parents, it would not be able to continue to supply public education.
1.3 There has been a shift in emphasis from religious to secular in society generally in the provision of many services. The fact is that people no longer expect the Church to be the main providers of these services. The Church could not raise the money to provide them on its own nowadays, because there has been a general shift in expectations so that the State is expected to provide, and people expect to pay taxation to the State, for these services.
2.1 Despite the changes which have taken place in the financing of education, there has been no fundamental review of administrative arrangements. The old forms, corresponding to a voluntary provision of services, have survived, but the content has changed, with the State taking more and more initiative. This is part of a process, and one can expect the State to take more and more responsibility for social services over time.
2.2 In this situation it is vital that a proper system of accountability be established in the provision of services. Basically, this means that the organising and administration of the education system be put on a statutory basis. Such an arrangement will ensure a standardisation of quality of service, and mean that public representatives can be held responsible in public forums for the success or otherwise of educational provision. In these democratic times, there is an expectation that important decisions are taken publicly, and not as a compromise between interest groups, or as administrative decisions. But far from meeting that expectation, present arrangements often carry an air of secrecy and much information of legitimate concern to parents and taxpayers is kept from the public domain.
2.3 The first step in establishing public accountability for education is to establish an Education Act which will describe the service to be provided and lay down democratic procedures for the administration of such services.
2.4 It should be said that the voluntary providers of education enjoy a position of power without responsibility. They can provide such services at suits, to such pupils as they select, without having the overall statutory responsibility to provide appropriate education for all the children of a neighbourhood. Inequalities are bound to result from such a laissez faire system.
2.5 Moreover, it should be said that power without responsibility leads to some undesirable attitudes amongst the voluntary managers. They select the staff they want, but they do not pay them. In the last teachers' pay dispute there were no constraints on management to behave responsibility. In effect, the teachers and managers combined to defeat the social objectives of pay restrain of the Government of the day, which had to find the money to pay the bills. This is not a satisfactory state of affairs.
3.1 The Constitution prohibits the endowment of any religion. Changes in the funding of education have laid the present system open to charges of endowment. At the time the Constitution was passed, the State contributed a much smaller proportion of the costs of education. Basically, as social objectives have changed, so has the size of the State contribution. So that now the situation is no longer that the State subsidises public education administered by the Church. Rather the Church pays a token contribution to the State and in return has the management of public education. No doubt, the token contribution is paid because of fears of charges of unconstitutional endowment. But present arrangements have already crossed that dividing line. The small size of the Church contribution to public education means that the State is now endowing Church education.
3.2 The charge of endowment is corroborated by the fact that the Church, despite the huge injection of public funds, has no statutory responsibility to educate children, but can select the pupils it wishes. This cannot be truly called public education.
3.3 Another fact which substantiates the thesis of unconstitutional endowment is the fact that Church schools are not democratically managed. Such elected representatives as there are on school boards are powerless and a Board recently was obliged to resign when they could not endorse the Bishop's nominee for Headmaster of a school. This is the single most telling sign that Church-owned schools in receipt of public funds without which they could not function are being endowed. It was one thing for the Church to retain the management of its school when it was providing substantial funding. It is quite another when these schools depend almost entirely on public funding.
3.4 To avoid the charge of endowment, it would be appropriate if control of schooling were in proportion to the source of funds. If 95% of the funding of a school comes from public funds, then public and elected representatives should constitute 95% of the controlling management.
4.1 Much lip-service is paid to the objective of providing equality of opportunity for all children. However, the only way in which such an objective can be attained is if the State accepts a statutory responsibility to afford each child the education best suited to its interests and abilities. Equality of opportunity cannot be achieved if suppliers of education do not have to comply with statutory requirements in the management of schools.
4.2 If equality of opportunity is to be ensured, the State has to rationalize existing educational provision, cutting out oversupply of education, and introducing new educational provision in areas currently neglected. If it subcontracts particular educational provision, it must be on standardized, statutory terms. Privately owned public schools cannot retain the old freedom of action, verging on anarchy, with the freedom to choose pupils and to choose the school's academic orientation. If they are to receive public funds, they must be part of a public plan. To function democratically, such a plan must be encompassed in an Education Act.
4.3 Equality of opportunity, with education of a high standard being offered to all children, is an expensive objective. To make it at all feasible in current economic circumstances, it is essential that existing educational provision be reviewed and included in the statutory plan. Those schools which prefer to retain their independence of action will have to look to their own financial resources. There is no way in which equality of opportunity can be economically provided if schools are to continue to be the free agents they currently are.
5.1 As the democracy currently provides most of the funding for public education, it is appropriate that the democracy should supervise educational provision. The way to provide for such public accountability is through legislation. In this way the elected representatives of the people will have formal responsibility for the education system they are required to finance.
5.2 Society is basically made up of parents, past, present and future. Parents are entitled to provide for the education of their children. At present, they are unable to do this directly, as the Constitution entitles them to do, as the Church has education sewn up. If education were controlled by an Education Act, the elected representatives of parents (themselves parents, for the most part) will be able to provide the education they require for their children.
5.3 It is inappropriate, in these democratic times, to have a fundamental social provision such as education in private hands, albeit under token public control. There is no reason why a denominational education system cannot be provided, for those who desire it, under democratic control, as is done in many continental countries. The Irish system of denominational education has more in common with feudalism than with democracy. The Bishop, as patron of schools, has all the powers of the feudal Lords. However, under feudalism, the Lord has the economic power as well as the social power. Under the Irish system, the patron of schools requires the democratic estate to provide him with the finances with which to exert his despotic power.
5.4 There is a growing constituency of Catholics, ex-Catholics, and others in the country who desire a multi-denominational education for their children. Under present arrangements, these people are forced to parallel Church control of schools by setting up private schools of their own, under a secular 'patron'. Like the Church schools, these schools are in receipt of public funds. However, the supply of these schools is haphazard, and it is unreasonable in these times of stringency to expect society to duplicate schools unnecessarily. Provision of public non-denominational schooling under democratic control for children of all ages and abilities, and as part of the educational plan for the country, should be part of the statutory commitment of the society.
6.1 All parents will agree that all the children of society should be given an equal opportunity to develop themselves through the education appropriate to their abilities. Rich or poor, urban or rural, all children deserve a chance in life, and an appropriate education is part of that chance.
6.2 Such equality of opportunity can only be provided if a comprehensive Education Act is made the basis of all public provision.
6.3 The administration of such a planned system of public education should be accountable to the consumers of that system, the parents. It should also be accountable to the financers of that system, the taxpayers. The elected representatives of the people, as parents and taxpayers themselves, must control the public education of the country.
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