Mary Kenny
“An inspiring head and some exacting inspection regulations can turn around a failing school”, writes Mary Kenny
One of Education Minister Richard Bruton’s proposals – in removing what is called the “baptism barrier” from faith schools – is to base schools more on a neighbourhood model, so that a child has an entitlement to attend the nearest school to her home.
Sounds so basic and sensible, doesn’t it? A child goes to the local school, where most of the friends and neighbourhood kids will be anyway.
That means neighbourhoods will be more integrated and develop a better sense of community too.
Well, it can work that way, and in many more rural communities it does. But watch for unintended consequences. In London, and in many other parts of England, it has led to fierce parental wars over access to the “neighbourhood” school. I have direct personal experience of this, both as a parent and a grandparent.
Reputation
Schools, like all institutions, vary. Some schools develop a reputation for excellence. Some schools develop a reputation for being less good. Some schools can be described as ‘sink’ schools, where, as I have been told informally, “the lads go into crime and the girls become single mothers” before they’re out of their teens.
But things can change and improve. An inspiring head and some exacting inspection regulations can turn around a failing school.
An energetic set of parents can make their presence felt. And there’s something else that can happen too: gentrification. A rundown area is gradually taken over by some trendy artists and designers who restore old buildings and attract more investment and bringing in smart restaurants and art galleries.
A major attraction in such an area is a school with a good reputation.
And then the turf battles start. The children of the neighbourhood are entitled to have first choice of their neighbourhood school.
Parents not quite in the catchment area set up elaborate fictions which place them, technically, within the school’s neighbourhood (by hiring a bedsit or studio nearby and giving this is their main address, for example). There is increasing pressure on the catchment area, and house prices rise accordingly.
Before you know it, the “neighbourhood” profile has altered, and poorer parents are squeezed out of the neighbourhood, and thus out of the neighbourhood school.
I don’t say this always happens, but it certainly can do. Secularists complain that parents pretend to be religious so as to get their children into faith-based schools: but a parallel pretence goes on when schools are based on postal codes and location.
Paradoxically, while most secularists want to diminish the power and influence of the Catholic church over education, the Church of Ireland has been among the first to complain that their schools will be badly hit by ‘neighbourhood first’ regulations. Since their minority population is scattered over a wider geographical reach, many of the children at a C of I school do not live in the direct neighbourhood.
Educational change? Proceed with caution.
A small charge for a common good
I suppose it’s inevitable – given the demographics, and the budgets – that free travel for pensioners in Ireland will eventually come under scrutiny.
The numbers eligible for free travel rise annually – from 637,000 in 2007 to nearly 800,000 in 2014, for example – and so do the costs.
In England, those over 65 qualify for a Senior Rail Pass, which allows a third off train fares, although you have to pay £30 annually for this. Bus travel is free (and for those resident in the London area, the tube is free – but not to seniors outside of London). On the trains, concessions cannot be used early in the morning (commuter time): an early morning train ticket from my part of Kent to London will cost over £60 sterling.
Later in the day, the senior railcard reduces it to £23 and later again to £14.
The priority in Ireland, surely, is to improve overall transport systems, especially in rural areas. Sometimes the only practical way to get between A and B in some country places is by taxi. If public transport could be bettered by levying a €50 charge for a Senior Travel concession (with exceptions for those under a certain income) surely that would serve the common good?
Fascinating to learn that Donald Trump’s Scottish mother, born Mary Anne MacLeod, from the island of Lewis in the Hebrides, was a native Scots-Gaelic speaker. She grew up in the Gaelic-speaking village of Tong, near Stornoway, the youngest of 10 children.
Like many a young Irishwoman from Connemara, where circumstances were so similar, Mary Anne went to America to seek a new life in the 1930s.
But on her deathbed, in 2000, she reverted to her native language of Scots Gaelic, which is, of course, close to Ulster Irish. I’d like to see more analysis of the influence of Mary Anne MacLeod on the 45th President of the United States.