Mary Mitchell O’Connor details the Fine Gael policy on:

Education

This Government’s ambition is to build a knowledge society. Education is at the heart of

a more cohesive, more equal and more successful society, and it will be the engine of

sustainable economic growth. Ireland has experienced a decline in educational outcomes

in recent years. We will draw from top performing education models like Finland to

reverse this trend. Even in our country’s crisis, we can make progress in education and

protect frontline services.

Early Childhood Care and Education

We will maintain the free pre-school year in Early Childhood Care and Education to

promote the best outcomes for children and families. We will improve the quality of the

pre-school year by implementing standards and reviewing training options.

As resources allow, this Government will invest in a targeted early childhood education

programme for disadvantaged children, building on existing targeted pre-school supports

for families most in need of assistance such as the young ballymun project.

Empowering Schools to Improve Standards

A priority in education will be to recruit, train and support the highest calibre of teachers.

School leadership will be fundamental to furthering this aim.

We will give greater freedom and autonomy to school principals and boards to raise

educational standards by devolving more responsibility locally, with greater freedom to

allocate and manage staff with required flexibility and to delegate management

responsibilities to teachers as school priorities require.

We will require schools, with the support of the Inspectorate, to draw up five year

development plans for their schools and individual teachers.

Administrative functions, relating to maintenance, school building projects and coordination

of support services currently carried out by principals will be devolved locally.

Protecting the Frontline

Education will be a priority for this Government. It will endeavour to protect and

enhance the educational experience of children, young people and students. To that end,

it will endeavour to protect frontline services in education, and seek efficiencies in work

and school practices, in line with the Croke Park Agreement.

Improving Outcomes

A longer term aim of this Government will be to position Ireland in the top ten

performing countries in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment

(PISA).

We will review Junior and Leaving Certificate systems and implement reforms necessary

to encourage greater innovation and independent learning, building on the National

Council for Curriculum and Assessment’s work in this area.

Maths and science teaching at second level will be reformed, including making science a

compulsory Junior Cert subject by 2014. Professional development for maths and science

teachers will be prioritised.

The system for evaluating schools will be reformed so parents have access to more

information when choosing a school for their family. A new system of self-evaluation

will be introduced, requiring all schools to evaluate their own performance year on year

and publish information across a wide range of criteria.

A bonus points system for maths, which is linked to specific maths or science courses,

will be introduced to encourage greater participation in courses where skills shortages

currently exist.

Making Literacy a National Cause

This Government believes that no child should leave an Irish school unable to read and

write.

A national literacy strategy for children and young people will be developed as a matter

of urgency, with school-level targets that are related to national targets. Every school will

be required to have a literacy action plan, with demonstrable outcomes. Responsibility

for achieving these outcomes will be vested in the school principals, who will also

receive continuous professional development to support the implementation of the

strategy.

Pre-service and in-service training in teaching of literacy for all primary and secondary

school teachers will be improved, with dedicated literacy mentors to work intensively

with teachers in most disadvantaged primary schools.

Together with a new focus on how literacy is taught, time spent on quality literacy tuition

is important. DEIS primary schools will be required to teach literacy for 120 minutes per

day; non-DEIS schools to teach literacy for 90 minutes per day. This time includes

incorporating structured literacy tuition into teaching of other subjects.

Local authorities will be supported in developing Right to Read campaigns involving

community supports for literacy, from within existing budgets such as more spacious

social housing, longer opening hours for libraries, homework clubs and summer camps

that improve literacy through sport and games.

21st Century Schools

This Government will end the treatment of ICT in education as a stand-alone issue, but

will integrate it across education policy. This will begin with merging the National

Centre for Technology in Education with the National Council for Curriculum and

Assessment. A new plan to develop ICT in teaching, learning and assessment will be

developed. This plan will incorporate the integration of ICT policy across other agencies,

such as the Professional Development Services for Teachers, the State Examinations

Commission, and Project Maths.

The primary priority for investment in ICT in the immediate term will be the integration

of ICT in teaching and learning across the curriculum and investing in broadband

development to ensure schools have access to fibre-powered broadband. Investment in

ICT will be maximised through pooling of ICT procurement.

Greater use of online platforms will be made to offer a wide range of subjects and lessons

online, and to enable schools to ‘share’ teachers via live web casts. These online lessons

will be made available through a new Digital School Resource, bringing together existing

resources from National Council for Curriculum Assessment, Department of Education

and other sources as a cost effective means of sharing expertise between schools.

We will engage with the publishing industry to develop more online learning resources

and new mediums for their learning materials.

Building Schools for the Future

This Government will prioritise school building projects in a revised national

development plan.

The objective of this Government will be to progressively phase out the inefficient

renting of school prefabs. In the interim the negotiation of prefab rental contracts will be

part of a reformed public procurement policy to encourage greater value for money,

transparency and reduce dependency on temporary accommodation.

The devolution of an annual capital budget to schools will be piloted to allow schools to

plan for capital projects.

The Department of Education’s central database of school accommodation will be

overhauled to ensure a complete inventory of school buildings and associated structures

is maintained so deficiencies are easily identifiable.

In areas of demographic growth, Shared Educational Campuses will be the preferred

model for future development of educational infrastructure. New schools will be built to

grow with their communities and to provide for more interactive, child-friendly model of

education.

Local authorities will be required to complete Educational Impact Assessment on

residential zoning, to identify potential need for schools.

We will negotiate the transfer of school infrastructure currently owned by 18 religious

orders cited in Ryan Report, at no extra cost, to the State. In principle, school buildings

and land will be zoned for educational use, so that they cannot easily be sold and lost to

system.

Delivering Equity in Education

We will consider recommendations of the review of the DEIS programme and use it as

platform for new initiatives to deliver better outcomes for students in disadvantaged

areas.

We will examine how to make existing expenditure on educational disadvantage more

effective, and innovative ways in which teenagers at risk of leaving school system can

stay connected, for example through use of ICT-based distance learning and projects such

as iScoil.

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. The priority will be to

move to a system where necessary supports follow a child from primary to second level

and to achieve greater integration of special needs-related services.

We will support diversity in education of children with special needs, recognising that

both intensive education and mainstreaming can be seen to work for individual children.

We recognise the critical importance of early diagnosis of autism and early intervention

and address current deficits in this area. We will reverse the cut to the number of

psychologists in National Educational Psychological Service in Budget 2011.

We will encourage schools to develop anti-bullying policies and in particular, strategies

to combat homophobic bullying to support students.

We will improve co-ordination and integration to delivery of services to the Traveller

community across all Government departments, using available resources more

effectively to deliver on principles of social inclusion, particularly in area of Traveller

education through the DEIS programme

We will examine supports in place for gifted students and create improved links with

third level institutions on regional basis, to provide gifted students with access to new

programmes or educational resources.