CUTS TO certain education allowances in the last budget were “mean”, have hit the most marginalised people in society and have only saved “petty cash”, the chief executive of children’s charity Barnardos said yesterday.
Fergus Finlay was addressing a conference on educational disadvantage hosted by the trade union Impact at Dublin City University.
Mr Finlay said the education system had a huge role to play in ending childhood poverty.
“There are communities all over Ireland where children perform significantly less well, on average, than their peers in other communities. The difference in performance is not caused by the fact that some areas produce children that are less bright. The difference is caused, essentially, by poverty,” he said.
He criticised Government spending on education, particularly in the pre-school area.
“In the most recent OECD table I’ve seen, we spent the equivalent of around $5,900 per pupil on primary education; $7,500 on second-level education and $10,200 on third level,” he said.
“All these figures were below the OECD average. We weren’t able to record any figure whatever for pre-school education, against an OECD average figure of $4,508.”
Mr Finlay cited the Supreme Court judgment in the Jamie Sinnott case, which ruled the State’s obligation to provide primary education ended when a person like Mr Sinnott, who had autism, reached the age of 18. Mr Finlay said this was a case where “the economy won and the people lost”.
He criticised the “mean chiselling cuts in things like Traveller education, back-to-school clothing and footwear allowances, that hit directly at people who have least access to education and are most marginalised in the education system, and that incidentally, saved petty cash – no more than that.”
Impact general secretary Peter McLoone told the Equality and Disadvantage in Educationseminar that unions would oppose further cuts in education.