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Political Parties Stance on Education in the 2011 General Election


Review below the main political parties policies on Education for the forthcoming General Election.

Fine Gael

Labour

Fianna Fáil

Sinn Féin

Green Party


SOURCE

9.1 Protecting the Frontline
  • Class Sizes: As we cut spending levels across all Departments, Fine Gael’s priority is to protect the quality of the educational experience received by our children. We will not increase class sizes.
  • Efficient Work Practices: In order to avoid further increases in class sizes, we will work with the education partners to seek further efficiencies in work practices – in line with the Croke Park Agreement – and to devolve more power to school principals and teachers to make tight budgets go further.
9.2 Parental Choice in Education
  • Parental Choice: Fine Gael will give parents a real say in how schools are governed. We believe the current situation with over 90% of primary schools under Church patronage is not reflective of the needs of a modern Irish school system. We will hold a National Forum on Education to allow all stakeholders, including parents to engage in an open debate on a change of patronage in communities where it is appropriate and necessary.
9.3 Early Intervention
  • Pre-School Year: Fine Gael will maintain the free pre-school year in Early Childhood Care and Education to promote the best outcomes for children and families.
  • Investing Early in First Steps: As public sector reform savings are achieved through our Reinventing Government plan, we will invest a proportion of these significant savings in an early childhood education programme called ‘First Steps’, for disadvantaged children, building on existing targeted pre-school supports for families most in need of assistance.
  • Special Needs: We will publish a plan for the implementation of the EPSEN Act 2004 to prioritise access for children with special needs to an individual education plan. We support diversity in the education of children with special needs, recognising that both intensive education and mainstreaming can be seen to work for individual children.
  • Autism: Fine Gael recognises the critical importance of early diagnosis and intervention and will address the current deficits in this area.
  • Speech and Language Therapy: Our FairCare plan will revolutionise the health service and will ultimately result in better and earlier access for children to speech and language services as required through the provision of primary care centres.
9.4 Building Schools for the Future
  • School Inventory: The building programme has been open to politicisation and has been fundamentally lacking in transparency. Fine Gael will overhaul the Department’s central database of school accommodation to ensure a complete inventory of school buildings and associated structures is maintained so that deficiencies are easily identifiable.
  • Local Control: We will pilot the devolution of an annual capital budget to schools to allow schools to plan for capital projects on a multi-annual basis rather than applying year on year for capital funding.
  • Temporary Accommodation: We will give the Office of Government Procurement and Property (OGPP) responsibility for the negotiation of prefab rental contracts to encourage greater value for money, transparency and reduce dependency on temporary accommodation.
9.5 Innovation in Education
  • Greater Autonomy for Schools: We will give greater autonomy to school principals and boards to incentivise innovation, new thinking and progressive approaches to learning and to free up restrictions in the day to day running of schools.
  • 21st Century Learning: Our NewERA stimulus plan will invest in broadband development to ensure that at least 90% of homes, schools and businesses have access to fibre-powered broadband. We will seek industry support to finance and develop a range of e-learning initiatives, such as:
  • Learning Lighthouses: A pilot programme, developing ‘learning lighthouses’ in a number of schools where students are equipped with an iPod touch, iPad, laptop or tablet pc. Teachers in these schools will be given specialist training and the pilot will be used to test new online learning initiatives.
  • Digital School: A new Digital School Resource for all, bringing together existing resources from the National Council for Curriculum Assessment, the Department of Education and other sources, including new content developed by teachers and pupils from Lighthouse schools. We will use this online tool to develop new, cost effective approaches to learning languages from a younger age and provide schools and students with new learning methods targeting areas where we have dropped in PISA performance, such as reading and maths.
  • Promoting Educational Achievement: We will investigate ways to share expertise in education, by making valuable lessons in subjects on the curriculum available for all students online.
  • Online Textbooks: We will engage with the publishing industry to develop more online learning resources and new mediums for their learning materials.
  • Technology Awards Programme: We will establish a new awards programme for students, rewarding students who achieve use their interest in technology to develop individual or group enterprises.
  • Maths Performance: In the 2009 PISA Study, the proportion of high achievers in maths was below the OECD average and its decline was one of the biggest internationally since 2003. We will introduce a system of bonus points for maths which is linked to specific maths or science courses to encourage greater participation in courses where skills shortages currently exist.
  • We will also invest available resources in professional development for mathematics teachers.
  • Irish Language: Fine Gael is committed to overhauling the way in which Irish is taught at primary and second levels of education, to ensure teachers are equipped with the right tools to instil a love of the language for all students and the curriculum is designed to inspire students to continue speaking the language after leaving school.
  • We will overhaul the curriculum at second level and we will critically examine the effect of current training methods of teachers to teach. Irish as an optional subject for Leaving Certificate will only apply following consultations on both matters.
  • We will allocate 50% of marks to oral Irish exams.
  • We aim to double the proportion of Irish students sitting the Higher Level Leaving Certificate exam by 2018.
9.6 Quality and Standards
  • International Success: We will ensure that Ireland is ranked in the top ten countries for PISA by 2018.
  • Quality Schools: Fine Gael will improve the system for evaluating schools so that parents have access to more information when choosing a school for their family. We will introduce a new system of self-evaluation, requiring all schools to evaluate their own performance year on year and publish information across a wide range of criteria including extra-curricular activities, special needs education, learning support, music or drama as well as exam performance in an annual school report.
  • Quality Teachers: Fine Gael’s priority in education is to recruit, train and support the highest calibre of teachers. We will investigate new policy approaches to ensure more teachers are qualified to Masters level in their area of expertise.
  • Leading Learning: We will introduce a numeracy and literacy programme for school leaders to inspire new methodologies across schools in these areas, encouraging principals to set new standards for learning at a local level in every school.
  • Curriculum Reform: It is of great concern that the school system is leading to a dependency on rote learning and is not equipping students for third level and beyond. We will review the Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate systems in Government and outline any reforms necessary to encourage greater innovation and independent learning.
  • Gifted Students: We will examine the supports in place for gifted students and create improved links with third level institutions on a regional basis, to provide gifted students with access to new programmes or educational resources.
  • Anti-bullying Policy: We will encourage schools to develop anti-bullying policies and in particular, strategies to combat homophobic bullying to support students.
  • Traveller Education: We will adopt greater co-ordination and integration to the delivery of services to the Traveller community across all Government departments, using available resources more effectively to deliver on the principles of social inclusion, particularly in the area of Traveller education.
  • Tackling Disadvantage: The DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) programme, which aims to overcome disadvantage in education has just been reviewed by the Educational Research Centre. We will consider the recommendations of this review and use it as a platform for new initiatives to deliver better outcomes for students in our schools.

9.7 Children First
  • Stay Safe Programme: We will require all schools to effectively implement the mandatory Stay Safe Programme.
  • Residential Redress: We support the establishment of an Independent Trust for survivors of child abuse. We will publish the legislation underpinning this Trust without undue delay and will consult as to the best possible use of the funds involved.
9.8 Upskilling for Recovery
A new “One Stop Shop” for Welfare and Job and Training Referral: We will create a new ‘one stop shop’ for getting back to work, the Payments and Entitlements Service. It will provide extensive skills assessment, training guidance and job referral services to the unemployed, as well as other welfare and service entitlements (see Section 19.5). Many job-seekers will continue to be referred to existing FAS training centres and services, which will operate under a new slimmed down governance structure. Community Employment schemes will be maintained and expanded but will be managed by local authorities.
  • Labour Market Activation: A Fine Gael Government will no longer subsidise a passive welfare system that does not help people get back to work. The new Payment and Entitlements Service (PES) will offer earlier interventions to support those losing jobs to remain engaged with the labour market. Among the measures that will be introduced will be:
    • A requirement on under 25s to maintain a Jobs Diary recording search experience and skill enhancement activities, with sanctions for unreasonable rejections of training and job opportunities;
    • Conditionality whereby benefits will be reduced if recipients refuse offers of training, education, work experience;
    • A reduction in the frequency of signing on in favour of a more meaningful schedule of engagement with Jobseekers; and
    • The introduction of Training Vouchers, that empower the unemployed to define and acquire their own upskilling needs rather than relying on a State bureaucracy to decide what courses to provide.
  • National Internship Programme (23,000 places): We will subsidise part-time one-year placements in the public service, private sector and voluntary sector for unemployed graduates to gain valuable experience while studying for a masters or diploma. They will be paid the entry-level going rate and will get a €3,000 bursary to help fund their higher education. Among the positions available will be classroom and teaching assistants in schools and nursing assistants in hospitals. IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland will be explicitly mandated to develop 5,000 work experience placements in the companies that they support.
  • Second Chance Education (17,000 places): This will offer former retail and construction workers that did not finish school or to college ‘back to education’ placements for two years. Participants will receive a premium payment of €20 per week on top of their social welfare payment, a €500 payment towards books etc and a €3,000 completion bonus.
9.9 A Quality Third Level Education
  • Graduate Contribution: Fine Gael will develop a fairer funding system for third level to ensure every student has access to a high quality education. This will involve a graduate contribution from students of roughly a third of the cost of their course. The contribution will be made by new entrants to publicly-funded third level institutions after the student graduates, enters employment and reaches a defined income threshold.
  • Third Level Efficiencies: We will not increase the student registration fee further. Instead, we will pursue greater pay and non-pay efficiencies in the third level system through greater flexibility in working arrangements, in line with the Croke Park Agreement.
  • Phasing Out the Student Registration Fee: As the student contribution model begins to return funds to the third level sector, we will phase out the student registration fee as an upfront charge.
  • Student Loan System: In the intervening period, we will establish a subsidised loan system for students and their families that are struggling to pay the student registration fee.
  • Speedier Student Grant System: We will introduce a faster and more cost effective system for paying student grants through the one-stop-shop Payments and Entitlements Service.
  • Quality and Standards: We will give students a better third level education by repositioning our universities and institutes to become world leaders in education through greater collaboration, specialisation and focus in every educational institution.
  • Improved Accreditation: We will ensure the training scandals of recent years are consigned to the past by overhauling the accreditation system for courses and providers. We will merge the existing accreditation authorities; the National Qualifications Authority, FETAC and HETAC to increase transparency.
  • Applications for University Status: We will amend the Universities Act 1997 as necessary to facilitate applications for university status.
9.10 Developing Ireland as an international education hub
  • Doubling Student Numbers: We will seek to double the number of international students studying in Ireland, maximising the revenue potential of this rapidly growing, profitable global market by overhauling the student visa system, identifying key target markets and exploiting the potential of the diaspora to develop the sector. Fine Gael’s International Horizons plan for international education aims to create at least 6,000 jobs and to double revenue in the sector to €1.8bn.

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Local education boards to meet local needs
  • Vocational Educational Committees will transition to Local Education Boards, charged with managing local educational needs.
  • New functions for Local Education Boards will include coordinating support services for schools to get better value for money, for example clustered secretarial services, co-ordination of supply teachers and tendering for electricity and heating. The boards will also be responsible for repairs and maintenance, and will also act as project manager for all major school building projects and refurbishments within their areas.

Better school leadership
  • School leadership will be reformed to give principals the skills, support and freedom they need for this increasingly complex job. Principals will be given substantial autonomy to manage their school’s resources, including staff, and to enable all schools to reach their potential.
  • Local Education Boards will undertake many administrative duties, relating to maintenance, school building projects and human resources, currently carried out by principals. Labour will implement a number of reforms to give principals more freedom and responsibility to raise the educational standards in their schools.
  • Principals will draw up five year development plans for their schools and individual teachers with the support of the Inspectorate. They will be enabled to allocate and manage staff with required flexibility, with management responsibilities delegated to teachers as school priorities require.
  • All new principal appointments will be for ten years only, and new principals will be required to complete a Master’s degree in educational management within an agreed timeframe.

More democratic Primary school patronage
  • A time-limited Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector will be established. This national Forum will be open to participation from all the stakeholders in the education sector. The Forum will have concise terms of reference and sit for a maximum of 12 months.
  • Recommendations of the Forum will form the basis of a White Paper for consideration and implementation by the Government to ensure that our education system can provide a sufficiently diverse number of schools which cater for all religions and none. As part of this process, parents and the local community should also have a say in the patronage of existing and future schools, for example by direct ballot.
  • Educate Together will be recognised as a patron at second level by the Department of Education and Skills.

Curriculum & Learning reform for the 21st Century
  • Reform of the Junior and Senior cycle will be progressed, as envisioned by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. In particular, Labour will prioritise the reform of maths and science teaching at second level, including making science a compulsory Junior Cert subject by 2014.
  • Costs of curriculum expansion will be reduced by innovative methods, such as enabling schools to ‘share’ teachers via live web casts and to use other technological innovations.
  • The information communications technology (ICT) infrastructure of schools will be improved. Future investment in ICT will encompass mandatory professional development for teachers to incorporate new technologies into their teaching practice. Labour will also maximise investment through pooling of ICT procurement.

Improve literacy for the first time in a generation
  • Labour in government will make literacy a national cause and develop a national literacy strategy with school-level targets, with a medium-term goal of ensuring that no child leaves an Irish school unable to read and write.
  • Every school will be required to have a literacy action plan, with school level targets that relate to national targets. Responsibility for improving outcomes will be vested in the principal.
  • Whole-school literacy plans will be required to incorporate more regular and structured feedback to parents about their child’s literacy standard, as it compares nationally, and as it compares with their fellow pupils.
  • Each DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) school will have access to an experienced literacy mentor charged with the professional development of staff.
  • DEIS primary schools will be mandated to teach literacy for 120 minutes per day; non-DEIS schools will be mandated to teach literacy for 90 minutes per day. This time includes incorporating structured literacy tuition into the teaching of other subjects.
  • Pre-service and in-service training in the teaching of literacy will be improved and increased for all teachers, at primary and second level.
  • Labour’s Right to Read campaign will be progressed in cooperation with local authorities – for example, more spacious social housing, longer opening hours for libraries, homework clubs and summer camps that improve literacy through sport and games.

Improving equity in education
  • Innovative ways of addressing disadvantage will be supported, such as ensuring teenagers at risk of leaving the school system can stay connected through the use of ICT-based distance learning and projects such as iScoil.
  • The cut in the number of psychologists in NEPS will be reversed. Labour will support schools, parents and children with special educational needs by ensuring that necessary supports follow a child from primary to second level.
  • Labour will also reintroduce up to 250 teaching posts of the 1200 posts being taken out of the system under the Four Year Plan supported by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, and will refocus them on areas where disadvantage is most acute.

Upgrading our education infrastructure
  • Labour will prioritise school building projects in our revised national development plan. In cases where schools spend hundreds of thousands of euro renting prefabs, Labour will enable schools to build permanent school accommodation instead.
  • The new Local Education Boards will manage and deliver school planning, building and maintenance more efficiently and costeffectively.
  • Local authorities will be required to complete an Educational Impact Assessment on residential zoning to identify potential need for schools. The creation of Shared Educational Campuses will be a core principle for future development of our educational infrastructure. Schools of different ethos and patronage could be located on a shared campus and utilise common educational facilities, secretarial supports, playing fields and sports facilities.
  • New schools will be built to grow with their communities, and to provide for a more interactive, child-friendly model of education. Labour will develop existing standardised designs for new schools, which will be the blueprint for future greenfield developments.
  • The transfer of school infrastructure owned by the 18 religious orders cited in the Ryan Report will be negotiated at no extra cost to the State. The existing patronage and activities of these schools will remain unchanged. We will also ensure that school buildings and land are zoned for educational use, so that they cannot easily be sold and lost to the system.

Reforming Third Level Education
  • Labour believes that the €500 increase in the Student Services Charge to €2000 is a step too far for students and their families. We will reverse this increase.
  • Third level institutions will be expected to maximise existing funding, for example through reform of academic contracts.
  • Recommendations of the Hunt report on higher education will be reviewed on a case by case basis. Reform of third level should be driven by the need to improve the learning outcomes of undergraduate degree students, as well as providing high quality research. It is this principle which will inform Labour’s policy on the future of the third level system.
  • A time-limited audit of level 8 qualifications on offer in Irish third level institutions will be carried out and the learning outcomes for graduates of these courses will be assessed.
  • The remit of the Ombudsman will be extended to third level institutions. This will ensure that students’ interests are protected in the delivery of third level education.
  • Administration of student grants will be transferred to the Department of Social Protection. This will reduce the bureaucracy associated with student support. We will also reform the means test for the student grant to ensure that it is equitable and targeted at those most in need of assistance.
  • A National Strategy for International Education will be devised. This will seek to attract students from a select number of countries to study in Ireland in line with the employment, academic and skills requirements of our overall economy and education sector.
  • An ‘Education Ireland’ brand will be developed spanning a five year period. The policy will target in particular students from India, China and the Middle East with advertising, visa policies and quality assurance managed accordingly.

Lifelong Learning
  • Labour will reverse the €200 charge for PLC courses. This is a charge on courses that are a pathway to further education for young people, who might not otherwise continue their studies.
  • Responsibility for vocational education and training, including an expanded apprenticeship programme, will be transferred from FÁS to further education colleges and the Institutes of Technology. To qualify for this transfer of funding from FÁS, further education colleges and Institutes of Technology will be mandated to develop flexible, high-quality vocational training opportunities for jobseekers, in line with the recommendations of the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs.

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New Schools and Growing Campuses
Fianna Fáil is committed to:
  • investment in new primary schools that will result in an additional 35,000 permanent places by 2016;
  • investment in existing primary schools that will grow their capacity to cater for a further 45,000 students by 2016;
  • investment in new post-primary schools that will deliver 15,000 new permanent places by 2016;
  • the creation of 8,600 new student spaces in our higher education institutions by 2016;
  • the replacement or upgrading of over 25,000 existing student spaces in our higher education institutions in the same period;
  • maintaining small schools that have the support of their local communities; and
  • ensuring that small schools receive a minimum level of funding that meets their day-to-day operational needs.
  • making a Summer Works Scheme available each year; and
  • ensuring maximum flexibility for schools in the delivery of projects under the Summer Works Scheme.
A Modern Curriculum
Fianna Fáil is committed to:
  • curriculum reform that results in a more active learning experience;
  • the introduction of a new post-primary junior cycle programme,
  • reinvigorating the Junior Certificate;
  • completing the roll-out of Project Maths; and
  • prioritising funding for the roll-out of new curriculum in Leaving Certificate biology, chemistry, physics and agricultural science.
  • increasing the time for literacy and numeracy in primary schools by three hours per week;
  • revising the primary curriculum to show clearly what skills children are expected to learn at each stage; and
  • publishing national standards, comprising a revised curriculum and examples of what students should be able to achieve in literacy and numeracy at the end of infants, second, fourth and sixth class in primary school and second year in post-primary school.
  • completing the roll-out of the reformed Leaving Certificate Irish curriculum;
  • monitoring closely the impact of the new syllabus; and
  • continued support for our Gaelscoileanna and other initiatives for educating through Irish.
  • restoring the reduced pupil-teacher ratio as a medium to long-term objective; and
  • prioritising junior classes at primary level and core subjects, including Irish, English, Maths and Science, at post-primary level for reductions in class size.
Supporting Disadvantaged Students
Fianna Fáil is committed to:
  • additional support for schools in areas designated as disadvantaged;
  • continuation of the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) programme;
  • reviewing the measures deployed within DEIS to ensure the optimum use of resources, the use of best practice and that targeted outcomes are realised; and
  • supporting schools that benefit from DEIS resources but where outcomes are below expectation with a tailored best practice training and support intervention.
Special Needs
Fianna Fáil is committed to:
  • maintaining an inclusive education system by funding special needs assistants, learning support teachers, resource teachers, visiting teachers, training for teachers and special school transport arrangements;
  • continued support for our special schools for children with acute special educational needs; and
  • full implementation of the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act (EPSEN) over time by way of a multi-annual plan.
Class Sizes
Fianna Fáil is committed to:
  • restoring the reduced pupil-teacher ratio as a medium to long-term objective; and
  • prioritising junior classes at primary level and core subjects, including Irish, English, Maths and Science, at post-primary level for reductions in class size.
Teachers
Fianna Fáil is committed to:
  • lengthening the B.Ed. degree programme for primary teachers to four years and the dropping of many academic subjects in colleges of education in favour of the study of education, literacy and numeracy teaching;
  • lengthening of H.Dip.Ed. course for post-primary teaching to two years;
  • requiring teachers to undertake continued professional development;
  • ensuring all new primary and post-primary teachers complete an approved induction programme as part of a new probationary process;
  • empowering the Teaching Council in relation to the induction and probation of teachers from September 2012; and
  • an increasing role for parents and students in the whole school evaluation process.
Smart Classrooms
Fianna Fáil is committed to:
  • full implementation of the Smart Schools initiative;
  • investing further in the provision of ICT equipment in both our primary schools and post-primary schools;
  • replacing satellite broadband connections in our primary schools with faster connections;
  • providing a 100Mbits internet connection to all post-primary schools; and
  • providing 10,000 teacher training places on ICT courses over the next two years.
School Transport
Fianna Fáil is committed to:
  • ensuring that taxpayers’ significant investment in the school transport system each year is being used to best effect;
  • implementation of the recommendations of the value for money review of our school transport system in a way that is sensitive to the needs of local school-going populations; and
  • expanding further the pilot projects involving our school transport infrastructure in integrated local transport solutions.
Higher Education
Fianna Fáil is committed to:
  • ensuring that our higher education sector is funded to the extent necessary to meet our ambitions for the sector;
  • continued strong Exchequer support for the higher education sector, while increasing the contribution of philanthropy, private sector funding and student contribution;
  • reform of student financing and the introduction of a deferred payment facility;
  • implementing key elements of the twenty-year National Strategy for Higher Level Education;
  • the consolidation of smaller institutions into stronger institutions and the development of technological universities; and
Research and Development
Fianna Fáil is committed to:
  • investment in research and development reaching 3% of GDP in line with the Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation;
  • setting out national priorities for publicly funded research;
  • the development of a national intellectual property protocol to facilitate the commercialisation of intellectual property from all higher education institutions; and
  • the development of a quality framework for Irish PhD education.

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Key Objectives
Sinn Féin will support and work for an education system that will:
  • liberate and facilitate the potential of all;
  • address and redress educational and generational disadvantage;
  • deploy resources to promote access to education by disadvantaged and marginalised groups;
  • effect meaningful partnership in a democratic education service;
  • put learners and teachers at the heart of neighbourhood networks of learning;
  • create and translate into action ˆnational priorities,national perspectives and national provision;
  • promote school achievement through quality of delivery and resources rather than narrow measurement of performance;
  • intervene at the earliest possible stages to include people and groups hitherto excluded from, or disempowered and alienated by,the operation of the present systems north and south.

These Key Objectives, and the broad principles that underlie them,must govern priorities,strategies and structures in education. They can only be achieved through a significant and sustained investment in education.

Schools as Learning Organisations in a Learning Neighbourhood

Sinn Féin will support and work for the development of an education system that is characterised and governed by the principles of organisational learning. Such a system would comprise of meaningful and effective partnerships between local education providers and the community with whom they work in the development, maintenance and ongoing improvement of ‘Learning Neighbourhoods ‘.

Tackling Disadvantage

Sinn Féin will support and work for an all-Ireland approach to identifying, targeting and redressing disadvantage in education. In particular, Sinn Féin will advocate significantly increased funding for education in areas of greatest disadvantage and focused intervention at the earliest possible stage.

The Irish language

Sinn Féin will support and work for increased availability and better resourcing of Irish-medium education and for significantly strengthened recognition of the essential place of the Irish language in an Irish education system.

Towards an education system for all of Ireland

Sinn Féin will support and work for an all-Ireland education system that promotes a self-confident, secure identity in a society based on equality and social justice -a society open and receptive to the world. To that end, Sinn Féin will campaign for all-Ireland implementation of the Right to Education from Early Years to 18 and harmonisation of the two systems based on principles of equality and inclusion. Such harmonisation necessitates increased sharing of resources and expertise. It also requires significantly greater ease of contact and mobility between and among institutions,partners and personnel involved in education.

Priorities into Practice - Areas for Action

Sinn Féin’s vision and broad aims for our island‚s education systems acknowledge the complex, interwoven and interdependent nature of their constituent parts. This document focuses on specific areas and structures of the education system and sets out key objectives and campaigning issues in each of them.None of these exists independently of the other. Within each interdependent area, the main objectives that Sinn Féin will support and seek to realise are as follows:

Early Years

Universally available publicly funded early childhood education with appropriate resources to facilitate on-site work with parents and accommodate the earliest and most effective detection of Special Educational Needs

Primary Level

Primary schools that are centred in the community, reflective of the community,that share information and expertise with local nursery schools and post-primary schools and aim for a pupil-teacher ratio of 15:1, to facilitate development and learning at this crucial stage

Post-primary level

All-ability 11-18 comprehensive schools with substantially increased support for pupils and teachers in those schools where the measured social and educational need of the school population is relatively high, with adequate resources to encourage team work, the sharing of information and experience and greater collaboration within and between post-primary schools and between them, their feeder primary schools and local third level institutions.

Third level/Further and Higher Education

Education and training to be an entitlement for all made possible by adequate grant-aid and support mechanisms,and the provision of focused access programmes for schools that currently have a low take up of third level places

Adult and Community Education

An all–Ireland adult literacy campaign with the clear objective of reducing adult functional illiteracy to under 10%within four years, and the development of a system of adult and community education that reflects and meets the diverse needs and interests of adult learners.

Youth Provision

Promotion of a young person centred approach to education and a youth service that can genuinely engage all young people through innovative and diverse programmes of informal learning.

Irish Language /Irish Medium

Improved provision of naíscoileanna ((naíonraí)where there is demand, with viability criteria that realistically reflect the needs of the local community.

Curriculum

The development of a broad and balanced curriculum that addresses the needs of the whole child, recognises the diversity of learning abilities and intelligences among young people, and develops the learners‚ interest in and enthusiasm for,learning about and engaging with the world around them.

Special Needs Education

Appropriate provision of supports within mainstream classrooms for children with Learning Disability, together with a joint departmental and governmental approach to the early detection and remediation of special educational needs.

Tackling Disadvantage

The implementation of integrated responses to the needs of students who are educationally disadvantaged and at risk of under-achievement in school, to be based on a joined up approach by schools, parents, local community organisations and agencies and the statutory sector. In particular: proper counselling facilities for pupils and non-managerial process support for teachers in schools where the social and educational need of the school population is relatively high.

Teachers

An enhanced status for teachers, and in particular, significant improvements in pay, terms and conditions which reflect the experience, professionalism and dedication of the profession

Increased funding for continuous professional development opportunities that make optimal use of existing expertise within the teaching profession

Systemic and Organisational Issues

The development of organisational and managerial practices that promote the principles of learning organisation within learning neighbourhoods.

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Excellence in education for future generations In Government, the Green Party protected education by: maintaining pupil-teacher
ratios; reversing severe education cuts in Budget 2009; and stopping a reintroduction of third level fees.
The Green Party will:
  • Work towards increasing investment in Education to meet 7% of GDP.
  • Reject any recommendations in the Hunt Report that would result in students incurring penal debt. As part of the next government, the Green Party will carry out a comprehensive review of the funding of the third level system, with a view to ensuring equality and accessibility for all students.
  • Review the Education Act to look at issues such as Boards of Management, patronage and enrolment. Reform school Boards of Management to be more open and transparent to parents students and staff, with student feedback. This would include a transition to a system of management linked to local government, similar to the UK (LEA) system for Education.
  • Retain existing pupil teacher ratio in primary and secondary schools.
  • Extend the one year free pre school to all preschool children.
  • Improve investment in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) utilising modern broadband services and cloud computing technology to deliver greater access to all students in a more cost effective manner.
  • Teacher Training at Primary Level to include more comprehensive modules on Maths, Languages and Science.
  • Implement key recommendations of the report on school behaviour, School Matters, including new measures to tackle disruptive students such as specialised units.
  • Review teaching training modules every three years to ensure that best practice is the norm at every level. Ensure that Post.
  • Grad Teacher Training is not privatised by increasing the number of Post Grad teacher training places in State Teacher Training Colleges.
  • Fast-track the full implementation of the 2004 EPSEN Act. Ensure the complete roll out on a strict timetable of the Education for Person with Special Needs Act.
  • Ensure that the Department of Education and Skills develops and implements a strategic action plan to address homophobic bullying and ensure schools and colleges provide a safe environment for LGB students.
  • Develop energy efficient, multi-use school buildings as ‘community campuses’ providing a range of services that can adapt flexibly as a community develops.
  • Develop and introduce a ‘healthy schools’ meals policy, building on existing pilot projects, and implement it gradually across the country.

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