GROUPS representing VECs, community schools and Catholic secondary schools strongly criticised many aspects of the Education Bill at the Oireachtas social affairs committee yesterday.
The Irish Vocational Education Association (IVEA) urged that the proposed regional education boards should give the VECs responsibility for all further, adult and continuing education, and youth work in their areas. Alternatively, the VECs should be retained as sub committees of the new education boards for this purpose.
The IVEA chairman, Mr Brendan Griffin, criticised the Bill for being "a legislative framework for schools and schooling, rather than being informed by an education and lifelong learning vision." The Bill needed additional clauses to deal with further and adult education, vocational education and training.
Mr Griffin said VECs and the proposed education boards could not co exist, and the former would inevitably be subsumed into the latter. The Bill was the "death knell of the VEC sector", and he would prefer to see the VECs dissolved rather than left as meaningless "guardians of an empty box".
The Association of Community Schools and Comprehensive Schools was unhappy that the Bill would overrule their schools deeds of trust and deeds of indenture. The ACCS president, Mr Diarmuid O Murchu, said these had been a "crucial factor" in winning the support of parents for their schools in the knowledge that their "autonomy and ethos" - would be safeguarded. Those parents would now be worried that this autonomy could be interfered with under the Bill.
The Association of Management of Catholic Secondary Schools said the section of the Bill which allowed the Minister for Education to freeze funding for a school which had not appointed an approved board of management should be deleted because it was unconstitutional.
The AMCSS spokeswoman, Dr Sinead Breathnach, said the powers the Bill conferred on the Minister for Education were excessive.