A lesson in turning the tables

At Collinstown Park Community College in Dublin west, progress is being made in getting pupils to finish the Leaving Cert and go on to third level education, but the State needs to weigh in with more targeted funding . Louise Holdenwrites

Brian Fleming has been principal of Collinstown Park Community College since it first opened its doors in 1984. As a result, he has been able to witness, and steer, developments at the college in the intervening years. The communities of Neilstown and Rowlagh, which he serves, are among the most challenged in the country, playing host to the full spectrum of Ireland's social ills from low educational attainment to drug addiction to long-term unemployment.

The increasing wealth of the nation has served to throw such disadvantage into relief. Areas like Neilstown and Rowlagh do not enjoy full employment, high rates of school completion and college transfer. Schools like Collinstown Park do not appear on media league tables. However, statistical superlatives are not the only measure of success. In just over 20 years, staff and students of Collinstown have made remarkable improvements to some of the community's more depressing figures.

For example, in 1984, when Fleming and his staff first opened the school, an Anco survey revealed that there was nobody living in the area with a third-level qualification. Most parents in the area had left school with a Group Certificate and had no experience of the Leaving Cert, never mind college.

"People in the area didn't understand education," says Fleming. "We weren't even speaking the same language. The staff at the school all came from totally different backgrounds to the people of this community. We had to learn to change the way we communicated - to use a sub-set of the Oxford dictionary, as it were. We had to think in terms of tabloids rather than broadsheets."

Research by sociologists such as Diane Reay in the UK and Gerry McRuairc in Ireland has demonstrated how teachers' language codes can be alienating to parents and students from different backgrounds. Fleming and his team learned early that in order to bring students into the education process, parents would have to feel comfortable within it too. Over the course of 20 years families in Clondalkin have been guided through the system to Leaving Certificate and can now boast of an education culture in their own homes, which is already benefiting the next generation.

The school now enjoys completion rates of 70 per cent (the national average is around 80 per cent). A significant further proportion go on to take up places on apprenticeship schemes, a process that is not, bizarrely, included in national education completion rate figures.

Perhaps the most impressive achievement of Collinstown, however, is the improvement in college transfer rates. While a 30 per cent transfer to college rate appears miserly compare to schools such as Gonzaga and Mount Anville, with their 90-plus per cent averages, it is a phenomenal achievement for a community which couldn't claim a college graduate in 1984. The success of Collinstown in getting its students to the Leaving Cert and beyond is not merely the result of a rising tide. The school has put in place measures targeted at giving students the same kind of scaffolding offered to students from more affluent backgrounds, such as after-hours tuition.

"In 1997 we established the Clondalkin Higher Education Access Programme with two other schools in the area," Fleming explains. "Initially the scheme was funded locally, but we now have the backing of the Department of Education and Science. The programme involves supervised tuition in the evening, mid-term and Easter revision programmes. Past pupils of the schools come back to give grinds and since we established the programme the number of students going on to third level has quadrupled."

The programme offers little more than the kind of supports that most middle-class students take for granted. Yet it has made a radical difference. Fleming is of the opinion that targeted supports like these are the only way to tackle education disadvantage in Ireland.

"The essence of education is putting young people in contact with effective teachers," says Fleming. "Minor reductions in pupil teacher ratios across the board do not make a difference. What is needed is a drastic reduction in ratios in the small number of schools where significant problems prevail.

"The Department seems to recognise disadvantage, but not grades of disadvantage. The Educational Disadvantage Committee, set up under the Education Act, pushed the idea of distinguishing between levels of disadvantage and responding differently. That idea, and the Committee, seem to have gone by the wayside. The Deis programme [ Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools] is coming up with positive ideas such as improving home-school liaison, but these schemes are automatically rolled out across the country and end up serving nobody. There's only €50 million available to the Deis scheme - that doesn't go far when every school in the country has to get its share."

The problem, according to Fleming, is the power of representative stakeholders such as the teaching unions, parents groups and management representative groups. "It is the job of the organisations to represent their members, therefore any gains they win must be awarded to all, regardless of need."

Fleming contends that communities such as the ones he represents need to lobby in their own right in order for real reform to take place. As few as 25 schools can be regarded as extremely disadvantaged in Ireland, and in his view concentrated funding for schemes such as the Clondalkin Higher Education Access Programme (Cheap) in these schools could make a significant difference in a short period. "Every major study of educational disadvantage in the last five years has pointed to the need for targeted funding, but the lobby groups keep pushing the other way. It's all 'me too'."

Fleming cites the case of the National Education Welfare Board (NEWB) - a good idea spread too thinly, in his view. "The NEWB has had very little impact on school attendance rates because their caseload is just too big. They have a very small staff to cover every school in the country. Meanwhile the principals and deputy principals are overloaded with bureaucracy. And it reaches a point where you have to wonder if we are simply collecting information for the sake of it."

Fleming hopes that over the coming years the progress that he and his staff have helped to achieve for Collinstown might be recognised. In an era of league tables and Whole School Evaluations, he believes that staff working in disadvantaged areas are the most deserving of recognition for the massive contribution they are making to society, in partnership with the communities they serve.

"Paying teachers extra is not the answer, but some recognition of the challenge these teachers face is required. One incentive would be to recognise service to disadvantaged communities at the end of the teacher's career. Perhaps a year of service in a designated school could count as a year-and-a-quarter in pension terms. An incentive like this would encourage more motivated and able teachers into the neediest schools and reward their contribution towards addressing some of the stark social imbalances that still exist in this country."