Speaking on the Labour Party’s Private Members Motion on Doubling the School Capitation Grant in the Dáil yesterday, Deputy Joan Burton derided Fianna Fáil’s use of school children as political footballs. Having made a catalogue of promises to improve the education system before the 2007 General Election, including the doubling of the school capitation grant, she accused the Government of breaking promise after promise now that they are safely back in office.

As every school child knows, the proclamation of 1916 proudly promises “to cherish all the children of the nation equally”. As the Minister for Education heads to the annual round of teachers’ conferences, her report card for this year will consist of an endless list of broken promises:

· Failure to provide adequate capitation grants for primary schools
· The abandonment of the solemn election promise to reduce class sizes
· The axing of the summer grants scheme of special and emergency repairs
· The long fingering of many school extension programmes

But with Fianna Fáil safely back in office, does she care?

Such is the arrogance of the Minister that the abandonment of the promise on class sizes was announced via a web-site notice. Many principals at the moment are discovering that their promised extension has slipped from urgent to some undefined time in the future as the Minister seeks to take the axe to significant elements of the capital programme for school extensions and refurbishments.

The basic costs faced by schools, water charges, refuse collection, insurance are all escalating dramatically.

We now have schools across the country struggling to provide a basic service – to keep the heating on, to keep the water running and to keep the doors open. This is a far cry from the idyllic ‘digital’ school of the 21st century. That’s before we even get into computers, PE gear and school books. In a modern education system, these shouldn’t be optional extras.

The Minister’s failure to properly fund primary schools stands alongside her other great failure to introduce a proper system of pre-school education.

While primary education is maintained by her as the Cinderella of the education system, there isn’t even a chance that children, particularly those from a disadvantaged background, will get the kind of pre-school education that all of the research shows pays dividends for life – for the child, for the family and for society.

It is remarkable that the early start system introduced by her pre-decessor Labour Minister for Education, Niamh Breathneach remains as a lonely project in giving poorer children a head-start.

Fund-raising for primary schools is a long established and even cherished tradition in this country. Right around the country ambitious Boards of Management and Parents Associations hold Christmas fairs, Easter Fairs, Race Nights, you name it, they do it, all to improve their children’s access to the best education possible. This fund raising which has been an important bonding element for school communities down the decades is meant to be for extras such as computers, sports facilities, gardens and landscaping.

Some years ago the Taoiseach spoke of his admiration for Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone and about the need to create social connections and social capital in an increasingly alienated society. In many ways fund-raising by school communities is almost a model of that kind of social community. But for the Minister to rely on the social capital of school communities for fund-raising for essential expenses is to abuse the endless good-will of parents never mind the kind of burden it imposes on school principals.

Since Minister Hanafin took control of the Department of Education, school principals are busier and busier as they cope with the never ending increase in the mountain of paperwork that she has instructed her Department to demand of them. Just as drowning schools in paperwork is becoming less fashionable in the UK, because of the time it takes from teaching and learning, our Department of Education decided that this paper-chase would be a fabulous way of slowing down demands for educational resources.

How does the Minister expect principals and Boards of Management to fund-raise to meet core expenses when they are already too busy dealing with the paperwork for special needs applications for children, and section 29 appeals by parents who can’t get their children into local schools because there aren’t enough places to cater for the thousands of houses that have been built in growing areas such as my own constituency of Dublin West.

I have called on the Minister before to sit down with all of the parties involved in education in areas such as Dublin 15 and plan how we best use resources to give all our children a head start in education. Currently the situation of school planning, site acquisition and budgetary provision can only be described as a dog’s dinner. Schools which have been promised extensions such as St. Brigids in Beechpark in Castleknock have now been dropped from the urgent list to some indefinite time in the future.

At a time when the Minister expresses concern about national obesity crisis in school children, the gym for Castleknock Community College now promised for more than nine years by FF appears once again to have been long-fingered.

Just as the building boom collapses and house building pretty well stops in Dublin West, the Minister and her Department refuses to discuss with local principals school enrolment requirements on a reasoned basis.

Last year the Minister presided over the late formation of two all-international schools, one in Castleknock, Scoil Cholm and the other the Educate Together School in Balbriggan. The Minister recently sent copies of Diarmad Ferritter’s biography of De Valera to schools around the country. I don’t think that De Valera, or Collins or indeed James Connolly or Padraig Pearse could have ever envisaged cherishing our children so that new comer and immigrant children would be kept apart from local Irish children in schools reserved for them only.

Just a few weeks ago the Minister came into the House to defy the just demands of parents of autistic children for access to ABA. This week we learnt that some seventeen schools are waiting for the Minister and her counterpart in the Department of Health to sort out re-sourcing for the special autism units in primary schools.

The Minister has led a charmed life as regards promises for education. I have a feeling however that her record is beginning to catch up with her. As economic horizons narrow, hard decisions have to be made. Children should not be the soft targets of reducing expectations.

The fact is that the Labour Party’s proposal to double the capitation grant would cost only €82m per year, less than 1% of the total education budget. By increasing the education budget by just 1%, primary schools around the country could be put on a sound financial footing, principals and teachers could concentrate on learning and if parents wanted to fund-raise, it would be for extras, not necessities.