At the start of the election season, Educate Together launched an awareness campaign – Treating All Children Equally – highlighting key issues facing our network of schools and the wider education system in Ireland:
- school choice
- economic inequality
- additional needs provision
- school accommodation.
We have since reviewed all the main parties’ manifestos against Educate Together’s key issues and have listed them below.
Update 8/2/2020: Thanks for the feedback everyone. This website post is a review and listing of all the main parties’ election pledges and it notes which issues are covered and not covered in each of the published manifestos. Educate Together is not commenting on the merits of these pledges and has avoided analyzing the track records of any of the political parties. It is absolutely not an endorsement of any one political party. However, we accept that the graphic used didn’t convey all the that information on its own, so we have removed it.
Fine Gael: ‘A Future to Look Forward To’
Choice in education
- Achieve the target of at least 400 multidenominational and nondenominational schools by 2030, to improve parental choice.
- Continue to uphold the rights of parents to have their children educated in a denominational school.
- Protect minority faith schools.
Economic inequality in education
- Provide a free books scheme for all primary schools, commencing in September 2022.
- Increase capitation paid to primary and secondary schools by 5% each year, over the next five years.
- Provide hot meals to the most vulnerable children in our society.
- Increase of schools’ capital funding by 70% compared to the past decade.
- Develop more tailored supports for DEIS schools, including a toolkit of supports, to enable schools to get the right supports to meet their needs, based on school improvement plans
- Improve pathways in our education system for less academic students, particularly in transition
- Review the current DEIS scheme, to extend it and to support more schools in disadvantaged areas and expand access.
Additional needs provision
- Front-load new Inclusion Support Model so that the majority of support posts are allocated ahead of time, removing the need for assessments and allowing for earlier intervention involving a nurse-led approach.
- Remove need for parents to get a formal diagnosis.
- Create a new training programme for SNAs,
- Work with school patrons, management and staff in providing the supports and training required by schools to provide school places
- Review the current system of the July Provision (or July Education Programme).
School accommodation
- Ensure the delivery of new permanent school places, to keep pace with demographic demand.
- Ensure that the focus on refurbishment of existing schools outlined in Project Ireland 2040 is delivered. (This includes upgrading school labs as part of the modernisation of science curricula, building and modernising PE facilities in primary and secondary schools, commencing deep energy retrofitting of schools built prior to 2008, and investing €420 million in digital facilities over the next decade.)
Fianna Fail: ‘An Ireland For All’
Choice in education – not mentioned
Economic inequality in education
- Prioritise DEIS band one schools to ensure that they receive priority for future reductions in class sizes.
- Reduce the DEIS Band One Pupil Teacher ratio to 18:1.
Additional needs provision
- Publish an annual report on the number and circumstances of students with special educational needs, the number whose needs are not being met by the education system and why.
- Introduce a series of legislative measures to improve access to and quality of education.
- Introduce legislation banning the inappropriate use of reduced timetables.
- Reform the NCSE so that its primary function is to ensure that every child with a special education need gets an appropriate school place, in line with their constitutional rights.
- Produce a five-year forecast of current and future demand for special needs education places in the catchment area of each school.
School accommodation – not mentioned
Sinn Fein: ‘Giving Workers and Families a Break’
Choice in education – not mentioned
Economic inequality in education
- Introduce a €140 Back to School Bonus Child Benefit Payment for every child paid at the start of July
- Introduce legislative measures to ensure schools make uniforms affordable and giving power to the Ombudsman for Children to investigate and make recommendations
- Provide free school books to all children
- End schools’ reliance on so-called voluntary contributions by increasing core capitation funding to schools and legislating to end the contributions.
- Increase funding for the DEIS scheme by 20%, enabling approximately 200 additional schools to avail of supports
- Re-establish the Statutory Committee to advise the Minister in initiatives to address educational disadvantage
- Increase investment in the School Completion Programme
Additional needs provision
- Provide the NCSE with greater powers to ensure that sufficient school places and classes are provided,
- Reduce waiting times for assessments and resourcing supports for students with special educational needs, including proper access to therapies.
- Recruit additional educational psychologists along with greater administrative support to make better use of their time
- Provide funding for the recruitment of 500 additional SNAs and 450 additional resource teachers over and above those required to meet demographic pressures.
- Establish an initial panel of 200 speech and language therapists for schools as a shared resource
- Reduce the student/teacher ratio to 20:1 at primary level
School accommodation – not mentioned
Labour: ‘Building An Equal Society’
Choice in education
- Continue to implement the programme for changing patronage of primary schools, to provide parental choice and to recognise the growing diversity in the population.
Economic inequality in education
- Make primary education genuinely free-of-charge including free schoolbooks, a uniform grant and healthy school meals.
- Resource the CSO to publish reliable, frequent data on the detail of child poverty. The restored Combat Poverty Agency will have a central remit in developing a strategy to eliminate child poverty.
- Reduce DEIS class sizes in proportion to reductions in regular class sizes, and increase capitation to DEIS schools.
- Reduce the cost of secondary and third level education.
Additional needs provision
- Redirect resources towards early intervention with young children who have a disability and special needs, including neurodiversity, to reduce waiting times and to improve outcomes.
- Expand the provision of Special Needs Assistants in schools
School accommodation – not mentioned
People Before Profit
Choice in education
- End Church control. Take schools into public ownership and put them under, local democratic control.
- Abolish all requirements for compulsory religious instruction.
- Allow religious groups and non-religious groups to access school facilities after school hours.
Economic inequality in education
- Establish a maximum class size – a maximum number of students in any class, anywhere in the country, of 18.
Additional needs provision
- Increase the numbers of special needs assistants in classrooms to the pre-crash level. SNAs are right to take action for certainty in employment and should have security in pay and conditions. Reverse cuts to guidance teachers.
School accommodation – not mentioned
Green Party: ‘Towards 2030: A Decade of Change’
Choice in education
- Ensuring that students’ ethnicity and religion (or non-religion) are not barriers to their enrolment and participation in school.
Economic inequality in education
- Reducing pupil-to-teacher ratios at first and second level with a particular focus on DEIS schools.
- Reinstating the school capitation grant to pre2010 levels for all schools.
- Establishing nationwide book schemes and ending voluntary school contributions in publicly funded schools.
- Prioritising supports for homeless students, students in direct provision and students from disadvantaged areas to help them stay and progress in education.
Additional needs provision
- Funding specific resources (particularly Special Needs Assistants) and special classrooms for children with Special Educational Needs to meet local demand.
School accommodation – not mentioned
Social Democrats: Invest in Better
Choice in education
- Establish a Citizens’ Assembly to make recommendations to the Oireachtas on how to move towards an entirely secular education system.
- Remove ‘faith formation’ from the school day and provide it as an after school option. Use the 150 minutes per week allocated to this in the Primary Curriculum for a new ethical education programme as part of SPHE,
- Rigorously follow-through on school divestment as per recommendations from the Forum on Pluralism and Patronage
Economic inequality in education
- 100% public funding of school books, the school transport scheme, and classroom resources.
- Abolish voluntary contributions for families
- Restore capitation payments to 2010 levels.
- Legislate to ensure all school uniforms and other requirements are affordable
- Ensure that class sizes in DEIS schools are reduced proportionately.
- Expand the DEIS scheme throughout the country.
- Establish multidisciplinary teams in and across DEIS schools to support students at risk of early school leaving.
Additional needs provision
- Resource schools for the further provision of ASD Units and special classes.
- Provide funding for more Special Needs Assistants and ensure greater job security.
- Increase funding for CAMHS and other supports for students’ mental health and wellbeing, including providing referral access to psychologists in every school. These measures are further detailed in our Mental Health policy.
- Invest in more significant speech and language support shared between schools
School accommodation – not mentioned
