If you come from an economically deprived background, you are three times more likely to enter adult life illiterate, writes Fergus Finlay
Once a year we see them in every newspaper, the smiling pictures of teenagers who have achieved record points in the Leaving or Junior Certs. It's worth celebrating, but it begs a question too.
Does the educational system help children succeed or is it failing them for life? If you believe that it is a child's ability that determines how they fare in the educational system and how they can overcome circumstances and environment, the question will seem redundant. For many, there is a romantic notion that sheer ability conquers all. Unfortunately, the facts don't stack up to provide a convenient QED illustrating the relationship between ability alone and educational success.
Even if they did show the brightest youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds winning against the odds, what about the children of average ability and those who are really struggling? Are they to be left behind because they do not fulfil our wish for a happy ending to the story?
According to the Department of Education and Science's national assessment of reading, 30 per cent of children from disadvantaged areas have severe difficulties reading and writing. In Barnardo's we have found this could mean children struggling to write their own names. The national average for difficulties with reading and writing is 10 per cent. Here the maths do prove the case.
If you come from an economically disadvantaged background, you are three times more likely to enter adult life illiterate. It means a childhood is robbed of a world of adventure in books. Ordinary teen social interaction such as texting is impossible. You grow up unable to read the instructions on a medicine bottle for your own child.
Unfortunately, the tragedy does not stop there - it can run from generation to generation. That's why breaking the cycle is so important. It means a mother or father who never had the chance to avail of educational opportunities is able to see their son or daughter experience all the benefits an education can bring.
It's about hope and a chance of a better life, something Irish people have always believed education could provide, so much so that it is in our Constitution. But nowhere in section 42 of the Constitution is there a clause saying "you have the right to an education, but if you are a child from a disadvantaged background you should not expect it to be an equal right", because the simple fact is that education in Ireland is a class issue.
The Higher Education Authority in its review of higher education published last year found that 80 per cent of children from a professional background went on to third level as opposed to 28 per cent of students whose parents were classed as unskilled manual workers.
Third-level participation of children from disadvantaged backgrounds is increasing, but it is starting from a very low base rate. What happens to children of average ability and those who are really struggling to make it? Are they to be left behind in a form of educational triage?
Other facts lurking at the back of the class include the 1,000 children who don't make it from primary school to secondary school every year. No one really knows what happens to them because in the absence of a detailed tracking system, there is no information.
The number, which comes from the Department of Education, is a guesstimate, although it is believed that up to 80 per cent of the children are from a Traveller background. Could this implicit understanding have something to do with the silence surrounding their welfare?
Last year the department launched its Delivering Equality of Opportunities in Schools strategy, a much-needed and welcome initiative bringing together previous diverse initiatives to create a coherent school support programme. However, one of its biggest missed opportunities is its exclusive focus on schools.
International research from the US and New Zealand shows that real success in tackling educational disadvantage lies in taking a "whole child" approach - that is, taking account of all the influences which affect a child's life, namely their family, school and community.
For example, if the US national school readiness indicators were taken as a model, children would benefit from policy interventions covering concepts such as their readiness for school, the schools' readiness for children and the capacity of families and communities to provide developmental opportunities for their young people.
These include families reading to children, the educational levels of parents, the number of families in poverty or in poor housing, and facilities available in the community.
In New Zealand the government produced a national framework on youth issues, one of which is educational disadvantage. It has adopted an innovative social investment approach to measuring the effectiveness of childhood interventions based on criteria of risk and protective factors. A risk factor can produce a negative outcome for the child and a protective factor would decrease the risk of that negative outcome occurring.
Education was identified as a "key protective factor" against a range of risk factors. New Zealanders found that interventions in educational disadvantage were at their most effective when they took a "whole child" approach. The "whole child" approach poses a significant challenge to Irish policy-makers as it puts a child's wellbeing as the ultimate goal for all policy initiatives, with all interventions measured against how effective they are.
It is no less of a challenge than the one we ask thousands of children to undertake every day as they battle through an educational system that seems so poorly able to respond to their needs. Every child deserves to be able to write his or her own name, to write who they are, to understand their world in words and to have their words understood.
Fergus Finlay is ceo of Barnardo's children's charity, which today launches its Make the Grade campaign, aimed at tackling educational disadvantage