THE QUALITY of a child’s education in the Republic is still directly related to their parents’ financial ability to support the school system, the head of Amnesty International Ireland said yesterday.
Colm O’Gorman claimed the State did not have a properly funded State-run education system. Instead, we had an under-funded network of private institutions, he said.
He asked: “How can there be a meaningful right to education if the State washes its hands of our primary education system and no one can be held accountable?’’
Addressing the annual conference of the Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN) he called for a change of focus in the debate about the Catholic Church’s control of education. The debate should not just be about getting the church out of our schools; it should be about getting the State properly involved in our schools, he said. “The Government has a legal responsibility to deliver on the right to free primary education but it has utterly failed to do so. The quality of a child’s education in Ireland is still directly related to how much money their parents can pay to support our ‘free’ education system.’’
Free primary education, he said, was a fundamental human right but it did not exist in this country.
He said the former minister for education, Mary Hanafin, had declared that the government had no legal responsibility for what happened in our schools.
“Our leaders have always been happier signing treaties and making promises than delivering on them,” he said.
“If they lived up to their commitments on the right to education it would mean the State would be fully responsible for planning, providing and funding schools for all our children. If things went wrong we as educators and parents, and our children as pupils, would have a right in law to hold the Government to account and to force change. “That is what a real right to free primary education looks like,” Mr O’Gorman said.
Principals’ network president Pat Goff said those in authority in our schools who had neglected to uphold the rights of children should step aside. He also welcomed Minister for Education Batt O’ Keeffe’s recent decision to make the teaching of the Stay Safe child protection programme mandatory. A recent network report revealed that, while almost all schools had a child protection policy in place, a minority did not have an up-to-date policy.