My Election Manifesto

Hello? Hello. You're welcome to if I were the minister for education from anseo.net. A regular podcast where I look at the world of primary education in Ireland and let you know, what I would do if I were the minister for education. On this week's show my election manifesto for the general election of 2024. Hello, this is Simon Lewis from anseo.net with an other episode of if I were the minister for education, and this is a general election special. Now, before you start worrying, please do not worry. I have not put my name forward for the general election on November 29th. I'm sure you'll all agree. You already put up with enough of me. I absolutely have to say I admire anyone that puts themselves forward to the people of this country. On whether or not, I agree with their policies. It's definitely a brave and vulnerable thing to do. I'm absolutely not brave enough to do that right now. I'm even struggling on social media, nevermind politics, where I I'm thinking about leaving X, like everybody else seems to have a, the reason I haven't left already. I'm not thinking of leaving acts because of any political reasons. You know, the Elon Musk, Donald Trump, a lot of people are leaving because of that. For me, it's simply because I just don't think you can have a discussion anymore. On. Twitter or ax. Without it descending very quickly into mud slinging. I don't use that platform for that or any platform. For that I like to have. Engagement with people. I'd like to have robust discussions when people don't agree with me or do agree with me and we can solve problems and get different points of view across. And I had this. Funny experience. I was playing around with different social medias, like LinkedIn and Instagram and threads and blue sky and things like that. I'm not quite sure where, what I'm going to do, but I basically have to feel, I have to start all over again. I think when my biggest problems is my ego, maybe, you know, there's 18,000 people that I've built up as let's say followers, but it just it's, that's just my ego. I need to, if I have to start again. I have to start again, but anyway, back to this story I was on and the difference between let's say what Twitter became has become, and on my experience on LinkedIn, I put up one of my posts on Twitter and needless to say, I received you know, this particular users who just think it's okay to tell me To go back to my own country or comment on my Jewish background and tell me that I'm not properly Irish, all that kind of nonsense is not. I don't know. A few years ago when that happened for the first time, like the. The president of the INTO rang me to wish me solidarity along with loads of other people. Whereas now it's just a weekly occurrence and you know, no one says a word about, I was just, but I posted the same thing on LinkedIn. It was around religion in schools. And this guy. Replied to us and she was, you know, he put in an argument ad against me and I responded to that. And he then responded thing. That's thanks Simon. That clarifies things really well. Thank you. I don't think we agree on everything, but that's look forward to chatting to you about this at some other time. And I was like, wait, are you not going to call me worse than Hitler or something? It's just, I don't know. Maybe I've just got used to the way. Twitter has become a, maybe it's probably time. Like most people that I know. To say goodbye. Anyway, that's why I'm not going to get into the world of political. So I can't even handle a few pot shots from anonymous people on Twitter. I don't think I'd survive a single day in the world of politics and probably for a whole host of reasons. And I may be the world of politics and the world's Twitter. Aren't too different from what I'm seeing. I think some of the personal attacks and some of the personal commentary on politicians. I just think it's. There's just, it's just. Terrible really. And, maybe that's maybe. That's why I'm not going to do it. I don't know. Maybe in the future. We'll see. So unfortunately now that I'm not going to be going for the Dáil, it means I'm not going to be the minister for education for sometime. Probably. And probably never. So I'm going to do a podcast. Of theoretical policies. I would propose if I was able to lead the education portfolio. If there is somehow some weird parallel universe that I didn't have to be elected to being the minister for education. But anyhow. Let's just do it. And we'll see what you think as always, I'm only going to focus on primary level. So if you're actually interested in second level for education, there's some really good people still around on ax. I'm sure they've moved to blue sky by now. Just the way things are going, but I can just name three secondary school teachers who talk about education at this sort of level in terms of analysis and what the issues are at second level. Humphrey Jones and Judy and girdle, and also Connor Murphy. Who I believe are talking a lot of sense at the moment. And there are others at Kara. Quill as well as another dash. I just would recommend to the ITO. I'm also going to mention, because they have gone with 30. Election manifesto items, 30 items. But I'm going to go to focus on three areas for my manifesto. Because 30 is a lot. Three is possibly manageable and they are, and you won't be surprised to hear any of these because I talk about them all the time. Patronage special education and funding. I was going to go with fourth. Which seems to be a principal's number one concern at the moment ads, teacher supply. But the area I believe is quite complex. I believe it's going to be, it's rooted in lots of different areas. Including the three areas, I'll be talking about it. And I may even mentioned teacher shortages in all of those areas. And if you are interested, I have written about the teacher shortage crisis on my medium blog. And in fact, the show notes for this podcast are on medium and you can read this alarm. It might be shorter than this podcast episode, but the article you'd be looking for is where are all the primary school teachers where I give and maybe an alternative theory to why we have a teacher. Teacher shortage. Onto my manifesto. I am worse than a politician. I haven't said a word Yashin. How many minutes have gone by. Anyway, we'll start off with number one. Our, my manifesto and that is patronage. I don't think anyone would be surprised to hear that. If I could make one change to the education system, it would be to scrap patronage. I talk about it. So incessantly to the point that I'm sure people avoid me in the street. However, I genuinely believe that if there is a single root of every single problem in the education system, despite it being a very complex system, removing patrons completely from the education system. I believe would unravel a large percentage of the issues we have. I've often compared to the education system at primary level to Christmas decorations and the edge closer to Christmas seasons. I can use this analogy. And it's where I believe you get your Christmas decorations. You put them up the first time you have an education system, and then you throw the the decorations up in the attic. And when you bring them down, they're all covered in nuts. And then you try it on tangle or not. And that creates another notch and that creates another notch. And after a while you just go ask, do you know what? I'll just. Throw it over the tree and hope for the best. I think that's what our education system of primary never looks like Bush. If you were to have removed the biggest nut I would say patronage position. And I think when people hear me speak about it, They tend to think I'm focusing on religion. Only. And I think. This is, and I think I don't blame people because most of my ire is with religious bodies. What they do and how they control the education system. And it's not surprising because 96% of patron bodies are religious in their nature. But. For the purposes of this, I'm not entirely focusing on religion because I do think it's absolutely crazy in a modern 21st century Republic that religion plays so much of a parcel in the education system when it plays no part in the daily lives of the vast majority of people's jobs or lives anywhere. The fact that a primary school teacher, most degree to effectively become a missionary in most denominational schools by leading prayer, preparing children for right to passages like sacraments and providing own objective. Faith forming lessons. To meet is nothing short of bizarre. And I think it is unique in most parts of the world. And it may even be unique in the world. It's certainly unique in Europe, as far as I know. And I was listening to a really good podcast, a friend of mine Eva Cassidy was on Louise. McSherry his podcasts, Louise McSherry see, I think, I don't know her very well, but I think she was raised in America. Or she went to school in America. And she was as speaking to And it was just interesting. To me anyway, listening to her as a pseudo sort of almost outsider to Ireland, although she's in Ireland for a long time by the air, by the signs of things, how. She, how bizarre she finds the education system. So much, so she avoided sending her own. Child or children to a denominational schools because she just finds it bizarre that we would you know, the word is indoctrinated. I know that word indoctrination is being used for other political purposes, but certainly faith forming a faith that she does not have to her children. It just seems very odd to her and to me and to Eva. However, I want to look beyond religion here because when I say would like to remove patronage from the education system, all patrons. Not just the religious ones and not just the ones I don't like There are a handful of non-religious patrons in Ireland are most of you will know of educate together. And many of you will know about the ETBs under community national school model. However, there are others one of the biggest, bigger ones is on first Patrina. Which is not actually a religious patron body, although many of their schools are religious in nature. There is saplings, which is this type of special skills skill Sinead, which is I think they have one school and then there are others. For those of you don't know what a patron does, their main job. And perhaps their only job is to create something that is known as the characteristic spirit of the school. So it's the ethos of the school and whether that's a religious leaning of the school, the language. Of the school or other types of characteristics that make us the type of school it is. So on first Patrina. Their focus is on language and that is the Irish language and that is their ethos. However to me. Patron buddy act more as a buffer. Ah it might have its ethos or its characteristics bears. I see it as more of a buffer and it simply aids the state in dodging its responsibilities are providing a properly functioning education system. Because if we look at the education system, we look at the constitution. At the moment it states that the government provides for education. It doesn't provide education. It provides for education. That tiny three letter word is why we have a patronage model. The state is responsible for providing money to patron bodies, to run their network of schools. And that includes paying for all their buildings, which is why the department of education effectively gift something like 5 billion Euro a year to the Catholic church and gifted to them for free. But the patrons body is to oversee this network of boards of management, which is essentially a group of eight. Meaning. Volunteers who all manage, who are off. Forced to voluntarily manage all aspects of one school, each these eight people. And because of this model, every school is a private entity, or I like to call them little fiefdoms. And to me, this is where the root of everything bad in the education system lies. Schools in many ways are no different from businesses despite being about 95%, the same as each other. So if you look at close shots, for example, as a business, most clothes shops are pretty much the same. But they are all competing with each other for survival. Schools, income, unlike clothing shops, their income is dependent on the number of children that attend their schools. So depending on how many children attend your school, It depends. On the amount of income you guys and the number of staff you have also depends on the number of children that attend the school. And this creates a system where if there are more, if there's more than one school in a particular area or a catchment area, They are all vying for those same children in order to survive. If you have no children, you have no teachers and you have no money and you close. But anything above zero means you survive. Whether or not the schools have the same patron body over them or not. In most cases, they are still competing with each other. So even Catholic schools will compete with other Catholic schools. However, when you add that ingredient of patronage into the mix, it does add another layer of competitiveness because two Catholic schools, in some ways there's very little in their differences at all. And you could say there is a choice between those two schools because they offer the same thing. Catholic schools, for example, which are the vast majority of schools try their best to be everything to everybody. In my view I don't think most conflict schools are. You know, Very Catholic anymore. I think most people, I don't think that's the in fact it's probably the least controversial thing I've said about Catholic schools. And in some ways I feel they do a really good job of pleasing. The majority of people, essentially, most Catholic schools right now run a gauntlet of being a nut to Catholic. And being Catholic enough to please both their patron arms, their clients. And when I say clients, I tend to mean parents rather than children, because it's the parents who decide what school their child enrolls. The vast majority of clients are, what can kindly be called? Cultural Catholics. I think it is, I think it's fair to say the vast majority of Catholics in Ireland do not believe in the tenants of Catholicism. But they do like the rites of passage. And I think I've heard it known. As the hutches matches and dispatches, so birth. So the christenings, the matches, the weddings and the dispatchers, the funerals as many call them. But they can effectively outsource to other rights passages to the school, namely the communion and confirmation, which don't rhyme with hatch match or dispatch without having to take any responsibility for preparing their own children for those sacraments. So if you are a parent and you do the baptism, you ag and outsource, and the religious rites of passage, the communion and the confirmation to a school without having to attend. At the church very often. For those clients, these parents that they want children to speak Irish. Again, they can outsource this to the school as many do, without having to take any responsibility for learning the language themselves. It strikes me as very interesting, the number of parents that enrolled their children to Escalona but then send it to English, medium secondary schools. I wonder why that is a lot of the time and I have my own theories. But I think it's a failure on someone that children, if you go to a Gwalia. School go to an English medium primary school. And I don't know if it's the guayle. It's that, that has, that is is the failure there. I think there's some thing else going on. And while I may be accused of in Ferring, gamification of the patron and system. By those two examples where parents use the system to gain a perceived advantage for themselves. Parents that don't have choices, which is generally anyone that doesn't subscribe to Catholicism wherever they are on the spectrum of devoutness the patronage model is just, ah, lottery. For a Muslim family that wants a Muslim school for third child, unless they live in Dublin or are willing to travel to Dublin. The patronage model is no use to them. They have no choice. For a family that needed to send their child to a non-religious school. For example, they have to hope that they live in an area where there might be such a school. And in Ireland in 2024, there are currently three counties where there isn't a single non-religious primary school. Almost half the counties in Ireland have fewer than two. So as you can see, choice is not something. That is in everybody's blessing. For example, I live in Carta. There is only one primary school in Carla that has a multi-denominational school. I don't think I could consider myself having a choice because I don't, I cannot send my child or I cannot work in any other school in Carlo because I do not, I will not be able to uphold the ethos and those risks myself of being fired for that. I do not want my child. Being given messages in a religion, I don't, I do not subscribe to and have no interest in subscribing him to, and I have no interest in him sitting hint in the back of a classroom for half an hour, a day on 13 for more during the sacrament season. And I don't like him being a guest or a visitor in his own classroom. Anyway, do you know this all ready? However, religion aside, the patronage model has an effect on all sorts of things. And let's forget the religion for a minute, because these are other things that are affected by the patronage model. Both transport insurance, special education. And more, for example, on bus transport, my child doesn't attend his two most local primary schools because they're both have a religious ethos. And because the nearest school that matches our conscience is over six kilometers from our house. We are entitled to bus transport to the school. I think it's a shocking waste of money. I don't use the bus, but I could particularly if I was working from home and has no other job, I could shove them on a bus in the morning, rather than walking to his nearest school. Anyway, school insurance is another model. One schools are grouped by insurance companies by their patron buddy or diocese. This means that if you happen to go to a school in one diocese, your school could be paying for paying more insurance. Premium. That a school that is part of on first Patreon, Okta. Or vice versa. It's baffling to me that this happens to different schools, have different insurance premiums. And I wouldn't blame you if you didn't believe me, but it is absolutely true. And I actually did a full podcast episode. On that. A couple of, a number of years ago actually wrote to audience who are there. You have the monopoly on insurance in Ireland for schools. And they refuse to divulge that information, which effectively told me that I was right. Because if everyone was paying the same level of insurance, they would have just told me, anyhow, I don't know. I could go on. I know. Anon. And by now, I imagine you can see why I obsess over patronage. I can talk about it endlessly. To me, patronage causes more problems than solutions. And if we scrapped patronage, children would simply go to their nearest primary school and it would allow the department of education to plan education properly because they would know exactly which children will be going to, which primary school well in advance. And as you can imagine, this would make things much easier when it comes to planning for special education and so on. Speaking of which. Special education. I think if you asked all 3200 primary school principals, what their top five concerns were in the education sector. I would be shocked if 1% of them said patronage. On the other hand, if 100% of them didn't say special education somewhere, I wouldn't believe you. I don't think there is a single primary school in Ireland that hasn't been affected by the collapse of supports for children with additional needs over the last two decades in Ireland. I dedicated a six part podcast episode to the subject where I try to figure out where it all went wrong and then try to suggest some solutions. Essentially, there's a huge mess that needs to be fixed very quickly. As we've already condemned a generation of children who didn't get the resources on how they needed to manage the education system and beyond the education system. For me, every classroom needs to have a teaching assistant. And this is the main thrust of my manifesto for special education. As I said in the podcast, if. If I was to tell you my top two things, I would change. If I were the minister for education, the first is, you know, would be patronage, but the second would be that every classroom needs to have a teaching assistant. And I want to tell you a little bit more about that. Because to me, a teaching assistant reminds me of an iPod. Because before I-pads existed. We didn't really know. We really needed them. We had laptops and we had phones and I think everybody was happy enough with those. And then in 2000, and I can't remember the year, but it was somewhere in the 2010s. If I remember correctly or 20 10, 20 11. And some point in the middle of that, Steve jobs came onto the stage and introduce the world's, the iPad. And we didn't know we needed, I would see the teaching assistants as the same thing, the space between the teacher on the SNA and the set. This is the second adult in the classroom that helps the teacher that assist the teacher for lots and for anything more or less a data add any, adapt, the set or SNA aren't going to do and would save us a lot of time and money. It's the smaller jobs. It's the ones where they're helping. The group of children, it's bringing the child who, who needs to be, who needs. Who's a dysregulated out of the classroom for a minute to, to calm down or to have a chat. It is the person who will do your displays for you. It is the person who will do a movement break with. With a child sit with the child, help the child access the work in the classroom. They can do, they can assist the teacher. And anyway they can, and every classroom should have one. And funnily enough, Every classroom in many countries in the, in Europe have one. And it's about time. We caught up. Because every classroom needs to have a teaching assistant as well as the teacher, because low level needs have to be managed in a classroom and it can't be done by one person anymore. And low-level needs today are not the same as the low level needs. They once were. Low-level needs are not really low on a teaching assistant is really needed. Anyway, after that every school needs to have onsite access to a nurse, a psychologist, or a counselor, or maybe both and a social worker. Big schools would probably need more than one psychologist or counselor. And I'd also suggest that every school would have access to therapies such as occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, dieticians play therapies, and so on. I don't believe it's realistic to expect one for every single school. So I would expand the role of the special needs assistant to include basic therapeutic interventions, like occupational therapy and speech and language therapy, which could be which could be, it could be, you could get one of those senior people to advise. And SNA on the basics on every so often the occupational therapists and speech and language therapists will come into the school to update. The various interventions and so on. So I really think these wraparound services like nurses, psychologists, counselors, social workers, speech, and language therapists, all the rest of them. These are. I would say. More. Really important because if you can catch children before they fall off the cliff, because that is the only way they're supported these days. I think in the long run you would save a huge amount of money. And to me, the above alone would fix a huge number of issues with special education. I also think of my manifesto. That we would have to have a bit of a look at special classes and whether they're actually a positive solution in schools. We've simply just opened them up without thought research on special passes, suggest they may not be the right tool. What about the role of special schools and what do we need to do to ensure their support or property? I'd have to have a look at that. In my manifesto. I think it says something that again is poorly supported. We need to give special schools what they need instead of offering little breadcrumbs. I know the IPP and are very proud of giving the administrative status to deputy principals. And I'm sure it's welcome. But that is not the solution. To special schools. It is not, the solution is not even close to the solution. It's breadcrumbs. I would also, I think we should look at the full inclusion model, but it would also need to be properly resourced because if it isn't, it will fail. In my podcast, I said special education will be the scandal of the 21st century in Ireland. And we will talk about it in the same breath as we do the sexual abuse and physical abuse crimes of the Catholic church in the 20th century. We need to fix special education now, and it's going to take a lot of thought. And a lot of money. Look at that segue into my third manifesto piece. And that is. Funding. One of the most curious pieces of funding every budget day in Ireland is the grant that is given to horse racing and Greyhound racing. And this year it was 99.1 million Euro. The justification for this is that without that almost 100 million Euro grant, the Greyhound industry would collapse and it needs to be propped up. Now, whatever your opinion on Greyhound drives racing is my point is that when it comes to other sectors in Ireland, The funding that is given is supposed to ensure that the sector can function. And when it comes to education, it seems to be an exception. Because we don't prop it up at all. And while one might argue they haven't heard of a school going bankrupt. This is generally because of the Goodwill of parents propping up the system through fees, fundraising, volunteering, and donations. There are very few, if any primary schools in Ireland that are properly financially resourced, most primary schools have to make choices between hiring a keener on a caretaker because they can't afford both. And whatever one they choose, most schools can only afford one on a very part-time basis. Even very big schools, smaller schools. Haven't got a hope. Most primary schools have to hope that the weather remains warm enough, so they don't have to switch on the heating and even if they do, and even when they do, they often can only heat the building for a very short time and asked the children and staff to wear extra layers. I don't know too many other public services that require that most primary schools have to wait until their essential services such as boilers and alarms fully break down because they don't get. N a funding to keep them maintained. And when they fully break down, they can apply for emergency funding, but there's no guarantee of that until they have to threaten to close the school. And many schools ring the department of education so much that it's really hard to find the phone number. Now, I think you actually have to email them or use some online form. And three days later, while you have a broken alarm, you have to send children home. And I don't know, it's mad. There's a famous saying that teaching is the only profession in the world where you steal from your home in order to be able to do your work. Most teachers are working from laptops that they're either their own, or are several years out of date. Teachers have to buy basic resources like whiteboard, markers, crayons, and everything else because schools don't have the budget to pay for them. I've actually heard of some teachers that buy food and clothes for children in their class, from their own pockets, because teachers are good people in. General, but they do not have the money to help the children in their class. So they end up doing it, but paying for stuff like that from their own pockets. To me, the funding model is primarily linked to the patronage model where the department of education provides for education. And if we took that word for, we could see a system where the state would be responsible for funding, everything a school needed. Whether that's the utility bills, transport for swimming, insurance, school lunches, caretakers, and so on. Interestingly, there are nine primary schools in Ireland that have this actual model where the state pays for all this stuff. And they are called muddle schools. And I would suggest if you don't know what model schools are, is that you look them up. They have a very interesting model, indeed. And in fact, such an interesting model, I think it's worth exploring. I may do a podcast on the model schools, their history, and how they work and function. Their patron is the minister for education and they are a very good model to show how the system could work in terms of funding. But possibly little owls. However for now, if we're going to have to get funding from the department of education. Essentially, it's pretty simple. You should treat us like Ray hounds. So that are my three. Malachi and manifesto pieces. I wonder what you think of them. I didn't actually talk about teacher shortages, so maybe I should add that is my fourth one. I would say that it isn't just about paying teachers more, although that would help. We are competing with teachers who are going out for better conditions, but we're also need to be looking at other reasons why we have a shortage of teachers because we are training enough teachers to keep the system going. It's just, teachers are leaving the system. I think some people think they're all abroad making something themselves in Saudi Arabia and told third Dubai. Anyway, I don't think they're in Saudi Arabia. They're in Dubai and all sorts of other countries. But a lot of them are leaving and doing other things. I was at the IPP N this year and the amount of teachers, former registered teachers who are now working in private. Businesses. It was quite surprising to me. They keep their teaching council number. In case they want to go back. But a lot of them are not working in the private sector and doing very well. And I think that's great for them. The thing is most, most people, of my generation started in teaching and probably will end in teaching most people of this generation that are outworking now have several jobs throughout their career. And far Paige them. I think it's one of the reasons why we have a shortage. We are competing with other jobs now people would find working from home much more. Attractive. Than that say the holidays that we got because fact I was chatting to somebody who was working in Spain was basically in Spain for the winter. And was working from other holiday home and going to the swimming pool and having a lovely time doing their job. And they flew over every month or so to Ireland, to the office, to. Tell everyone they realize, I think, I don't know, but. We are competing with much more interesting work conditions. Working from home allows people to mind their children, if they're sick and all the rest of it. I think the teacher shortage isn't as easy as money. I think there's a lot going on patronage. Falls into it. Special education falls into a two. Because again, There are reasons why people don't go into teaching. And not because of the children particularly, but because of the systems that make it so difficult to teach in primary schools now, So there you, how much my election manifesto with a bonus? One on the teacher shortage. I hope you've enjoyed my election manifesto. Vote for me. No, I'm only joking. I'm not going for action. Don't worry. I really. I hope you've enjoyed this. And if I do become the minister for education at some point, and now, you know what I'll be doing, so now you now if I do go, then you can vote for me and hopefully I'll get all those things over the line just for you. Thanks so much for listening. The chat to you again soon. All the very best. Bye-bye.