Education was the big loser in the boom, writes BRIAN MOONEY

Did we in education miss the gravy train? Over the New Year break, I listened to Tanáiste Mary Coughlan’s end of year interview on RTÉ. She was pressed on the issue of the exorbitant expenses run up by herself and others in Government over recent years. In her defence she said we were now living in very different times; when these expenses were incurred, the exchequer was awash with money.

What mystifies me and tens of thousands of my fellow teachers in schools throughout Ireland is that if the State had such an excess of funds – one that resulted in the huge excess at FÁS and elsewhere – how is it that the basic facilities that teachers require to educate the children of the nation to the highest standards possible, were never provided during those years of plenty?

How come we have ended up with 20,000 surplus hotel bedrooms when a similar investment in school buildings could have transformed the face of primary education? How must the teachers and parents of primary students, who have seen entire generations of children educated in prefabs, respond to the news that the State was awash with money – but little of it was used to haul many of our school buildings out of the 19th century?

There are other questions. How come the 2002 report of the task force on the physical sciences did not lead to the modernisation of school science labs? The Department of Education could never secure the budget allocation required to act on the report’s findings and implement its recommendations. In September 2009 at the Farmleigh conference, this recommendation was again put forward as a matter of urgency by the major employers of science graduates in Ireland.

How was it that during this period of unprecedented wealth the four new curriculums in technology, engineering, technical drawing, and construction, drafted by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and forwarded to the Department, lay gathering dust for years? Why? Because the modernisation and updating of laboratory facilities and machinery was – we were told – beyond the resources available.

Much of this work still remains undone, and its absence is undermining the capacity of teachers of these subjects to give their students the skills to become competitive in the international labour market.

This lack of modern facilities in technological subjects is also denying students who may be more technologically than literary orientated the motivation to continue on in school until they complete their Leaving Certificate.

How come that during this period of unprecedented wealth, when philanthropic donation from both domestic and expatriate donors, poured billions into the physical development of our third-level colleges that the amount of funding for each undergraduate student attending third level in Ireland actually dropped by €2,000 per head?

Are we, as many leaders at third level have warned, now in danger of undermining the integrity of our undergraduate education system, and thus our capacity to recover our international competitiveness

The overflowing coffers that Minister Coughlan spoke of at Christmas are now empty and the long-term infrastructural investment in our education system, that could have transformed our society, and the education potential of all our citizens, has not taken place. Education was the big loser in the boom years.