Breathnach accused of attempting to eliminate role of VECs

THE Minister for Education has been accused of proceeding with "obscene haste" to set up regional education boards, which will cost over £400 million.

Mr Brendan Griffin, president of the Irish Vocational Education Association (IVEA), said he was "shocked and horrified" at Ms Breathnach's proposal to "effectively eliminate" the vocational sector as part of her plans for reorganising education structures.

Mr Griffin told the IVEA annual conference yesterday that the Minister's commission on rationalising the vocational education committees had given the VECs just 10 days to formulate submissions on their 65 years of education service. He condemned this "dismissive and off hand" procedure and described the commission as "a charade".

The effect of the Minister's plans as laid out in the White Paper would be to reduce the number of VECs, to revoke their powers and functions, and to emasculate the vocational sector.

"The IVEA has no interest in the retention of an emaciated vocational sector. It would be more honest and sensible to abolish all 38 VECs entirely," he told the conference in Newcastle Co Down.

Accusing the Minister of "appallingly understating" the complexity of VECs, he said the committees were not just the managers of 250 vocational schools, they were intimately involved in vocational education, which covered a far broader spectrum.

However, Ms Breathnach told the conference that the VECs would remain "key players in the new educational landscape".

The restructuring of the system would strengthen the position of vocational schools.

"At school level you will be responsible for the schools under your remit. You will these schools. You will employ staff of these schools and you be responsible for the appointment of boards of management to these schools," she said.

Mr Griffin said the 10 boards proposed by the to take over the co ordination of local education services would be too large and too remote from local communities. The proposed boards were the "antithesis" of the VECs because they would control, and not support, education.

The core issue of funding for the regional boards had been avoided, he claimed. Based on spending by similar bodies in Northern Ireland, running costs would amount to at least £40 million per board. The Minister should commission an independent cost analysis to clear any doubt.

The IVEA president said the first casualties in Ms Breathnach's plans to rationalise the VECs would be the services to the community, particularly the disadvantaged.

"VECs have taken it on themselves to be concerned for, the weaker sections of Irish society, early school leavers, the long term unemployed, and disadvantaged youth. We have therefore a responsibility to those people to defend what minimal services are available, however inadequate," Mr Griffin said.

He also called on the Minister to improve equipment grants for VECs, and to allow post Leaving Cert students to be eligible for higher education grants.