To achieve a just society our children need equality of opportunity when it comes to education, writes Ailish Connelly
"WHAT'S THE difference between a northsider and a southsider? Southsiders send their children to private schools." As told by a southsider at a northside dinner party, this pallid little joke is as enlightening as it is true.
Yes, many, though not all, south county Dubliners do send their kids to private school where most of the private schools in the country happen to be. This largely Dublin-centric phenomenon has many parents of schoolgoing children in a flurry. At certain times of the year, such as league table time or springtime, when many offers for school places for the following September are made, you would think every parent in the country sends their children to private school.
Yes, they pay their taxes too and they have very good reasons for choosing private over public schools, yadda, yadda! All valid. Nobody, not least the Department of Education, is going to interfere with the private school sector, but can we just examine some of the spurious notions that revolve around the private versus public school debate? Can we stop pretending that we have an equality-driven education system and that we don't maintain a system that, by its definiton, excludes swathes of children?
Let's take, for argument's sake, two very different areas of Dublin - Foxrock and Finglas west. Tom, Dick and Harriet may live polar-opposite lives depending on which area they come from. The person in Foxrock needs a far higher income to afford the house there in the first place and de facto must be a heavy hitter, such as a chief executive or a consultant surgeon.
In Finglas, the likelihood is that the income is generated from lower-paid work. Each household's aspirations may be wildly divergent. There will be differences in levels of parental expectation. Harriet from Foxrock may well be expected to follow mummy into the law, while Tom from Finglas would please his parents if he got a job. Any job.
Psychologists have long discovered the link between third-level achievement and where one ends up in life. If you left school without a group cert then your definition of achievement is very different from someone who has a PhD.
If you are from a Traveller family in Finglas in a three-roomed tigín, there may not be elbow-room at the table for homework, never mind the income for a home computer or reference books. It has been proven that homes with more than 100 books are predictors of a better future for the children of that home. If your parents can't read and you become the first in your family to do the Junior Cert, for your family surely you are a super achiever.
But out in our ruthless society we won't find much joy for you in our skewed second-level system, and you can say goodnight to much chance of a third-level education.
The resources in Harriet's house in Foxrock are infinitely more abundant. Chances are that her family is small, that she weekends in London or New York where she can take in that Chagall exhibition, then write a scintillatingn 1,000-word essay on it for school the following week.
We may murmur that this is how it has always been. But there must be solutions to even things up a tad. What about putting more money into the education system in areas like Finglas west? What about additional provision for further education, for services to make it attractive and aspirational to be seen to progress?
The children of deprived communities will never be equal on any level until their parents' income improves, and until they can see success on the ground that they can emulate.
If two children were swapped in the Rotunda hospital tonight, one from each of the area's above, by age 18 it is most likely they would have conformed to type and would be living out the destiny that circumstances had settled upon them from birth onwards. Huge differences can be made in someone's life by the correct allocation of resources.
There is also the idea floating about that if you really care about your child's education, you will find the money to send her to a fee-paying institution. However, if a child is bright and willing to work they will do well wherever they go, fee-paying or not. So say many teachers I have spoken to over the years.
Meanwhile, the sorry saga of the scramble for the elusive secondary school place starts up every year. Parents have heard that such-and-such school got great results and if only you can badger your child's way in, before you know it your son will be in medical school and history can repeat itself.
I've also heard of parents fretting that Junior won't get the right job if they don't go to the right school. Perhaps they are correct, because it seems Ireland is still not a meritocracy, but if Junior is smart enough and a good worker maybe he could end up working with Tom from Finglas, if Tom could only get to third level.
With the boom, certain State schools have seen their numbers slip. If you pay for something, so the story goes, it must be better. A patient waiting in A&E can tell you it's not necessarily so.
If a downturn really takes hold, the pendulum may swing back in favour of State schools. But in Finglas west and Foxrock, Tom, Dick and Harriet will continue to live their different lives, their paths never crossing, unless we have enough imagination as a society to lay the foundations for it to become more than a very vague possibility.
Ailish Connelly is a full-time mother living in south Co Dublin and an occasional columnist with The Irish TimesThe children of deprived communities will never be equal until their parents' income improves