Gross inequality in education

This is the time when many Leaving Certificate and A Level students find out how their applications to Third level institutions have panned out.

Many are delighted and have received the course they want, but others, many among the very top achievers, will be disappointed. This is because areas like medicine are so heavily oversubscribed that even top achievers are not guaranteed a place.

It is to be welcomed that Minister Noel Dempsey has this week accepted a recommendation that will remove the health science professional courses from the points system. By 2007, medicine, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy and radiography will all be undertaken at post-graduate level instead.

But why are only 2% of university level places assigned to these studies? Surely we need more doctors, so we should be training more doctors, rather than so few that we maintain the privilege of the profession.

But the real scandal in the education system is in the allocation of resources. In Foxrock, over 90% of second level students go on to third level, while in north-west Dublin the figure is a derisory 13%. Around 40% of students may proceed now compared to 25% some 20 years ago, but for many, the gap in terms of educational disadvantage has only widened.

Inequality starts at the very outset of a child's learning experience and merely intensifies through primary and secondary levels. Resources need to be directed at keeping children in school longer, in particular children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, who tend to drop out before leaving certificate level.

Shocking figures for the rate of dropouts from second level schools, especially in Dublin, last week, reveal that half of students in some areas never get to the Leaving Cert. A quarter of students in Dublin 17 never even complete their Junior Cert and only 20% sit the Leaving Cert.

What is truly shocking has been the government's response. In September 2002, in one of his first acts as Minister for Education, Noel Dempsey cut €6 million from the School Retention Initiative, specifically designed to reduce the school dropout rate.

These figures show that inequality in the 26 Counties starts at a very early stage and has been fuelled by the policies of successive governments.

The fact that the high dropout rates are almost exclusively confined to areas of disadvantage shows that the Coalition government, which has been in power over a period of unprecedented economic boom, has not cherished all the children of the nation equally.

Instead of investing in all our children's education, they have squandered the money, have rewarded their multi-millionaire sponsors with handsome tax breaks and to add insult to injury, are funding handsomely the private and elitist schools of the rich and powerful which will further inequity in society.