A quiet passage for Martin's Bill

The most noticeable thing about Micheal Martin's Education Bill `Mark 11' is how little discussion it has provoked. This is hardly surprising, since most of the radical elements in the `Mark 1' version of his predecessor, Niamh Bhreathnach, have been excised.

Most obviously, the regional education boards have gone. The argument about annual cost - up to £40 million, says the Minister - won out over recommendations of successive expert bodies, from the OECD to the National Education Convention, that many powers of our over-centralised education system should be devolved downwards.

In his speech to the Dail two weeks ago, Martin even managed to turn this widely acknowledged historical weakness into a strength - he noted, to the disbelief of some opposition members, that the Irish system had "developed organically, without the overwhelming central control exercised in so many countries".

One senior educationalist said last week that people did not seem to realise how big an opportunity had been missed to democratise Irish education. Last year's Bill, he said, would have given parent and teacher representatives on the boards "huge leverage" over a wide range of support services: career guidance, psychological and remedial services, libraries, and dealing with disadvantage and co-ordination of school resources.

Another apparent pullback from the drive towards democratisation signalled by Bhreathnach's Bill is that schools now have to set up boards of management only "where practicable". Last year's Bill not only made them mandatory, but provided for the Minister to freeze funding to schools which did not set up approved boards.

This ministerial power to impose boards was strongly attacked by management bodies, particularly those linked to the churches. A number of them obtained legal advice which indicated that this clause was unconstitutional.

It's understood that similar advice caused Minister Martin to make them optional this time around. The last thing he wanted was to be hauled into court to fight an action against, for example, the Church of Ireland Board of Education.

There have been two reactions to this pullback. The second-level teachers union, ASTI, reacted angrily. "At a time of social partnership, and when over 40 per cent of second-level schools are still managed by one person, usually a cleric, it is entirely unacceptable that parents and teachers should not be involved in the running of schools," says ASTI's deputy general secretary, John White.

The other viewpoint is expressed by the spokesperson of the second-level principals' association, Jean Geoghegan, who praises the "enabling tone" of the new legislation as being "particularly suitable for the Irish context," compared with the "prescriptive" nature of its predecessor. "It's important that we move everyone together by consent."

Over 90 per cent of schools already have boards, Geoghegan points out, because they are the most appropriate and effective way of running schools.

Good politician that he is, Martin has also acceded to several demands from key lobbying groups. His most popular move has been to make the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment statutory, a consistent demand of the education partners, and particularly the teacher unions, for many years. Bhreathnach's omission of this from her Bill amazed most observers. The Minister has also pleased Irish language organisations by giving them what they were seeking, a national body to oversee and provide support services to education through Irish. Some groups, notably the Conference of Religious of Ireland, have asked him why the Bill's proposed committee on disadvantage, unlike this Irish body, can be set up only at his discretion.

He may not have avoided vested interests determined to defend their legal territory completely. An expert on education and the Constitution, Dr Michael Farry, warned last month that the Bill's granting of powers to the State to override denominational schools' right to refuse entry on religious grounds might make it unconstitutional.

Teachers' unions and management bodies agree that the new legislation's two-tier appeals structure - with most appeals other than expulsions and long-term suspensions dealt with at board of management level - is an improvement on the ill-defined provisions of the Bhreathnach Bill. However, the National Parents Council (Primary) is unhappy at the "unacceptably narrow" grounds of appeal, with bad teacher behaviour towards children not included.

One of the few pieces of radicalism retained by the present Bill is the provision for the formation of students councils. Overall, however, the conclusion must be that this legislation will do little to remove the blockages from a constipated Department of Education, whose unaccountable management of the minutiae of a complex and ever expanding system led to the clamour for legislation in the first place.