IN the context of the new Education Bill it needs to be recognised that the structure of our educational system has until now, served us extraordinarily well.
One of the principal reasons for our current remarkable economic performance is that we have inherited an educational system that has fostered and serviced an exceptionally high level of educational motivation amongst parents and students to which must be added the equally striking motivation of so many of our teachers.
I believe this educational motivation is ultimately our greatest natural resource, more important in the long run than physical resources such as our rich grasslands.
In the past, two obstacles have stood in the way of reaping the full benefits of this exceptional educational motivation: lack of material resources to expand the system so as to cater adequately for the consequent high level of demand; and lack of employment outlets at home to utilise the talents of the motivated young people coming out of this educational system.
Happily, both of these obstacles have in recent times been largely removed. First of all, during the past 30 years a succession of governments have invested heavily in our education system. In the two decades between 1966 and 1986 there was an increase of some 37 per cent in the number of young people aged 16-24. Far from allowing the need to cater for this huge increase to slow the expansion of educational participation, it was hugely accelerated.
In fact, during this 20 year period the proportion of this enlarged age cohort in education was actually doubled, and the expansion of educational participation has since continued apace, to the point where more than half of each school leaving cohort now enters higher education.
Meanwhile, the lowering of trade barriers globally and, following our accession to the EU, the opening of the western European market has brought to Ireland a quite disproportionate share of high tech industrial investment, mainly from the US. The new employment these firms provide, combined with the spin off growth of service employment, is now ensuring jobs at home for a high proportion of those completing their education.
But at the very time when we are securing, for the first time, the full benefits of the high level of our people's educational motivation, the structure of Irish education is facing new and challenging problems.
FIRST of all, the decline in the birth rate since 1980 has already reduced by 30 per cent the annual inflow of children into our educational system, with a further drop still to come. And this decline has not been evenly spread throughout the country: in 11 counties the number of entrants has fallen by 35-39 per cent, and within three years the number of school entrants in some counties will have dropped by 45 per cent.
The scale of the school mergers and closures required by this massive decline in the numbers entering education cannot be overstated. This restructuring will be all the more difficult because many of our primary schools are already so small that classes have to be combined; while many secondary schools are already too small to offer students the range of subjects they require at second level in order to develop their many talents.
The primary sector has already experienced some of the impact of this decline, but the greater decrease in numbers in that sector has still to come. The drop in numbers at second level is only now beginning to be felt.
It may not be entirely a coincidence that it is just at this critical point in the long term cycle of growth and decline of our educational sector that the decision has been made in the Department of Education to devolve to regional level the poisoned chalice of school closures and mergers that will be required. Nevertheless, objectively, the devolution decision is a wise one, for it would be absurd to retain in Dublin decision making about these essentially local issues.
However, this process of devolution is going to be complicated by the emergence of public demand for new types of schools to cater for parents who either want their children educated through Irish or who want to exercise their right to have their children educated in multi denominational schools, or in non denominational schools without the teaching of religion.
THESE demands would have been difficult enough to meet had they arisen 30 years ago when our educational system was starting its process of expansion following the increase in the birth rate. But now they have to be faced at a time when the number of children in the second level system will be falling by somewhere between 33 and 50 per cent.
It has to be said that our predominantly religious private education sector, through which at least three quarters of our people have been educated, has benefited us enormously in purely economic terms. The extraordinary dedication of generations of religiously motivated people, both Protestant and Catholic, who have built and run most of our schools has provided the great majority of our people with an education system that is highly motivated and, in the case of the Catholic schools, low cost and marked by high productivity.
Without the basic education structure that the Catholic Church constructed over a period of more than a century, we could never have afforded the extraordinary breakthrough in educational participation of the past three decades.
Now we are in the unusual position of being able to offer to almost all our population a choice between free public and private education at second level. As a result we have been largely spared the class divisive choice between free public and fee paying private education, over which many parents in other countries agonise.
But this magnificent inheritance has a downside. Starting from where we are, with primary and private secondary systems that are almost exclusively religious in character, we are now having to cope with a situation where religious faith is declining and a small, but fairly rapidly growing, number of our people are starting to assert their constitutional right to either non denominational or nonreligious education for their children.
At second level various solutions may be found to this problem. Some vocational schools might cater for this growing demand by becoming more academic.
Second level schools owned by religious orders might be transferred to new owners with a different agenda. And, of course, some religious schools already admit children from purely secular homes, allowing them to "sit out" classes in religion. Some may extend this practice, although others may be reluctant to do so.
But at primary level - and perhaps at junior cycle in second level schools - the constitutional duty of the State under Article 42.4 of the Constitution may in time create a severe problem for governments.
The article provides that: "The State shall provide for free primary education ... and, when the public good requires it, provide other educational facilities or institutions with due regard, however, for the rights of parents, especially in the matter of religious and moral formation."
But at the primary level almost all schools, other than a few Gael Scoileanna, offer what might be described as single ethos education in premises currently vested in religious patrons, whose role is for the first time given statutory recognition in the new Education Bill.
How in this situation is the State to provide, without an immense and hugely costly proliferation of new educationally inadequate small schools, for the rights of that growing number of parents who want either a non denominational or non religious primary schooling for their children?
This is only one of a series of intractable structural problems in our educational system to which insufficient attention has, I believe, been given.