School principals should stop "wasting time and energy collecting shopping tokens to provide a football or a computer that should be funded by the State", the annual conference of the Irish Primary Principals' Network in Killarney was told yesterday.
Larry Fleming, the group's president, also suggested that the role of churches in education be "freed up to focus on supporting parents in faith formation and liturgical preparation".
On funding, he said State support covered only 50 per cent of basic running costs in schools.
"At the moment we have the farcical situation whereby a child's education is funded to the tune of 96 cent per day, half the cost of a loaf of bread."
He said fundraising merely perpetuated the scandal of under-investment in our children, compared to the OECD average.
Mr Fleming welcomed the recent decision by the Arch- diocese of Dublin to abandon the "Catholic first" enrolment policy in two west Dublin schools. School governance, he said, must first and foremost serve a child's educational needs.
President Mary McAleese told the conference how today's young generation enjoyed an unprecedented level of freedom.
But she cautioned: "That very freedom places them right in the thick of many forces over which they have little or no control."
She told delegates: "Your pupils face long commutes, mammy and daddy both work, Granny and Granda are miles away for many.
"They have televisions and computers which can entertain, amuse and educate but can also betray their innocence and their vulnerability."
At the same conference, the Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady labelled as "ill-informed caricature" and "offensive" claims that faith-based schools were intrinsically divisive.
"I make no apology for defending the right of Catholic parents and others to ensure such education and teaching for their children as is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions, a right recognised in our Constitution and in international instruments of human rights," he said.