Connect: The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (Asti) has accused the Government of running an education system "on the cheap".
The charge follows this week's Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report which placed the Republic of Ireland 29th out of 30 countries for funding primary and secondary schools.
Unlike other more ideological OECD reports that attempt qualitative assessments of educational performance, this week's was merely quantitative. Even so, perhaps it's not to be considered definitive. Yet Minister for Education Mary Hanafin's complaint that the report fails to recognise extra funding of Irish education since 2003 doesn't rescue this Government's dismal record.
The OECD report says that the Republic of Ireland spends 4.4 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education. Hanafin says the real figure is now 5.2 per cent.
Even if she's right, however, we are only half-way between the OECD figure and the internationally suggested benchmark that spending on education should account for at least 6 per cent of GDP.
Frequently we are told that this State is the second wealthiest in the world. If it is, then its performance in funding education is disgraceful. It might or might not be necessary to fund primary and secondary education in line with our galloping economy. But the gap between number two and number 29 is simply too great. It also bespeaks a cosy consensus of ignorance.
Politicians invariably link education to the economy. If this Republic can boast the second best economy in the world on the 29th best funding of primary and secondary education, does that not show a certain native efficiency? It does, so long as a strong economy is the dominant - arguably even the sole - aim of education. The economy certainly matters but is that it? The prospect of more money for a more ignorant population has a mechanistic, anti-educational feel. We do not require an effete, undynamic, formally overeducated public but neither do we require an excessively "dumbed-down", "trained-up" population. That is the problem in making education too much of a mechanism for economic development: it straitjackets its true purpose.
We risk education becoming part of industry rather than the other way around. Fair enough, there is an Irish education industry but part of its purpose must be to produce thinking human beings rather than merely skilled automatons. However, the abysmally low level of funding for Irish primary and secondary education is not encouraging.
The relative "success" of the Irish economy (though most of the loot is too concentrated among the wealthiest) in recent years is because we speak English, are practically on a flight path between London and New York, have been chronically underdeveloped, have offered generous corporate tax breaks to foreign companies and because of our education system.
Yet there is rampant "short-termism" about our economic success. We will not stop speaking English; Britain and the US will not move; our infrastructure remains seriously underdeveloped; the corporate tax breaks will continue. But our education system, far from keeping pace with the economy, is in decline because of a number of issues, not least its underfunding.
There are now schools in the US that can't afford to be in session five days a week. This is despite the fact that the US reportedly spends double Ireland's proportion of its GDP on education. Clearly, just throwing money at the problem is not guaranteed to alleviate difficulties. Then again, the US education "industry" carries an ideological bias towards privatisation.
Public education is under attack there and it is under attack here too. The thrust of a dominant private sector is, naturally, to privatise education with the result that poorer communities get left behind. You can see it in this state where schools in, say, poorer parts of Dublin are often ramshackle and beset by forces - principally poverty - antithetical to any child's education.
It's telling that more private secondary schools have been built, mostly in south Dublin and Cork city, in recent years. Irish education too is privatising, so the Government will not dramatically increase State spending. It will quibble over figures instead. But the great problem with this strategy is that wealth becomes excessively determining of the careers people are likely to pursue.
It all breeds people designed to work in specific niches in the Irish economy. It is a part of the New Feudalism promoted by big business. Look at the United States and you will see the way Irish education is headed. In the US, a tiny percentage get a superb education, the majority are made functionaries for the economy and the rest are kept in abject ignorance without prospects.
The Republic of Ireland will become the same if the drift towards privatisation of education continues apace. It may ensure short-term economic "success" but it will also store up societal problems for the future. The Asti is unquestionably right: this Government is running a so-called education system "on the cheap" despite the fact that an Irish government never had more money.
Island of Saints and Scholars? Suits and Scoundrels sounds more likely.