How the other half learn

Secondary education in Ireland has been free of charge for over 40 years, OK you still pay for books, school transport, uniform and voluntary contribution but the day when schools charged admission fees that helped pay the teacher’s wages are over. That was an enormous advance and surely by this stage you’d expect that in a republic equity. Which makes a comment by Jim Glennon very interesting. There are 6 TD’s in Dail Eireann who went to the same school, Roscrea. And if you go down the biography of other TD’s you see Blackrock, Clongowes, Kings Hospital, Gonzaga etc all well represented. All fee paying boarding schools. Let me out myself at the start, I went to a boarding school too, or rather I was sent to boarding school after the Inter because like many of my generation at that time my parents thought they were doing me a favour and if at 15 your parents said do something you did it.

Boarding school contrary to the popular assumption was not a pleasant place, I doubt whether my educational outcome would have been any different if I’d stayed at the day school. The educational benefits of boarding from my 3 year experience are dubious as many students repeated to get a basic pass but maybe I’m being subjective. The fees at the time cost my parents £600 per annum for the year, you got home only at holidays and mid-term breaks, the distance home was light years. Its now 30 years since I left and from my side of the fence the mystique of paying for an Irish education is the equivalent of a three card trick, you pay for something that you cannot compare against in terms of life experiences and there’s no money back guarantee if you didn’t buy achievement on the Leaving Cert.

Private second level schools can invest in their schools and build swimming pools, pay coaches for teams, run school tours to continental locations but they can do that because teachers the essential component of any school are paid by the state and the school charges enormous fees to parents who have huge resources. Some parts of Dublin have few non-charging second level schools. A survey of intake to TCD a few years ago showed just one ordinary second level school among its top 10 feeder schools. I think the continuance of fee-paying schools is an obstruction towards achieving equity in terms of access to 3rd level. If college fees are brought in why not remove state support for fee-paying schools?

Private schools met yesterday with the Oireachtas Committee and denied cherry picking the best. They complained how their middle class parents are finding it hard to put together the fees for their children. I wonder do these schools know how the other half live? The school book grant has disappeared for most second level schools in the 2009 budget however there was no sitting for the Oireachtas Committee to listen to the parents of these children. In one school I know, if 40% of families make the voluntary contribution, it’s considered excellent. The defence that such schools are essential for the survival of minority religions conflicts with reality that there is no minority religion secondary school in Co Wexford and yet the Protestant Community here thrives because of community integration.
The day of the boarding school is over. State support for fee charging schools are a luxury we don’t need. In a society where scarcity is rife, privilege is a commodity that I think should be rationed. I know my union supports the retention of state funding for fee-paying schools as there are many union members in these schools. But the time has come to put the quality of education of the majority of school going children and the working conditions of the majority of their members ahead of preserving the status quo. If resources in the Department of Education are limited, it’s time to think further than Minister O’Keeffe jumping to Finance’s whip. Now’s the time to restructure our society in an egalitarian way to offer a better and more sustainable future for all.

PPP’s are dead in the water

I have always taken a cynical view of PPP projects. Public Private Partnerships was the Thatcherite response to delivering public services. Tony Blair’s New Labour embraced the idea enthusiastically too, as indeed did Sinn Fein in the Northern Executive. Lets be clear, the state has to interact with the private sector to provide infrastructure like roads, schools, hospitals. The private sector has always constructed these and there has rarely been a case that the Comptroller and Auditor General has highlighted as poor value for money from conventional procurement. It’s straight forward if not tediously slow. The need is identified, its designed, constructed and handed over.

However the PPP scheme works as follows; government identifies a need. It advertises the need within the private sector seeking interested contractors. The competition provides a winner. The government then enters negotiations with the successful bidder and signs a contract to pay the contractor over a period of time (say 20 years). The contractor then organises finance, designs, builds and finally operates the project. When 20 years is up the state will take over the service, not before another contract is agreed with the bidder to hand over after renovations are paid for by the state!

The advantage for the politician involved in decision making is to be seen delivering and that any failure to deliver is the responsibility of a private sector firm over which he has no immediate control. The collapse of PPP schemes aimed at affordable and social housing in Dublin is a classic example of politicians sidestepping the responsibility. The advantage for the private company is a steady revenue stream and an asset that they can develop as they see fit.
Public benefits of these projects have been minimal but companies involved in PPP’s often made large contributions to New Labour. PPP’s allow the private sector to dictate where public infrastructure is delivered and how fast. The failure of the Department of Education to build a second level school in Gorey points up the short comings of these schemes. Add in Thornton Hall, cost over runs in PPP schemes in 5 Irish schools and the late arrival of LUAS.

I was quite surprised to hear 2 local FF TD’s singing the praises of PPP schemes given the complexity of the process. New Ross and Enniscorthy are set to get by-passes via PPP projects under the Transport 21 plan. If you believe the 2 lads sure they’ll be along in jig time. Not so, but don’t let the electorate know the reality.
Why I think the 2 TD’s are off the mark is because the finance is to be raised privately and because there is intense pressure in the money market for cash where will they get the money? How expensive will the cash be given that Ireland’s credit rating is deteriorating due to the banks bailout? If the successful bidder can access cash where will the state find the money to pay them back? Both TD’s are inviting the electorate to suspend their knowledge of the market place because we want to believe these roads will be built.

The reality is that it’s not going to happen either next year or the year after that. The credit crunch has done for PPP’s. PPP’s are on life support and given the reality that government borrowing is set to rise beyond the 6% GDP agreed and well above the 3% agreed as part of the single currency criteria, there’s no scope for off balance sheet borrowing. The wind is definitely out of the PPP sails and hopefully the tax payer will not be ripped off by a time wasting competition f or over priced assets.