Leading magnate attacks education system
The man who is said to have “the best CV in the world” is not impressed with Ireland’s education system. International banker Peter Sutherland slammed the system as grossly under-funded and “not as good as we think it is”.
In a report in The Sunday Independent (16 Dec 2007), former Attorney General Peter Sutherland declared that, because of chronic under-funding, the re-introduction of fees for universities must be strongly considered. He said the government and the opposition had been dodging this issue for far too long.
Ireland's third-level sector needs massive investment if it is to compete properly on an international stage, Sutherland said.
"It is important for Ireland that we have a proper education system. I know that this is a sort of mantra, but we are not doing it. Our actual expenditure on universities, when you compare it with the UK - we are not actually investing in the areas in which we should be investing," he said as he called on the political class to "no longer duck away from the issue".
"Now at the research end, we invest quite a lot," he continued. "I don't know how effective that is, but our universities really need more support than they are getting now and this needs courage, because we really need to take on the issue of fees. We have to address these issues -- there is no ducking them. But the political class are ducking them."
He also said that school league tables and other such ranking criteria were essential to improve our under performing schools and he called on schools and universities to reverse the "dumbing down" trend currently underway.
"I don't think we have a meritocratic system here ... We have to also introduce meritocratic evaluations at all levels. We can't have a situation where it is impossible to evaluate, impossible to judge the performance of schools because no one is going to allow any sort of rankings or analysis."
He also said that entry to college should not be based on money but on intellectual ability. "We have to get away from the dumbing down of our education system."
Mr Sutherland is a past pupil of Gonzaga College, Dublin 6. (Source: Sunday Independent)
January 16th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Let me guess…Mr. Sutherland is a very highly paid individual..from a very privileged background..college fees would be no problem to him..league tables should be introduced for primary and secondary schools ONLY so that we can make the system even more unfair for the under-privileged and the many excellent schools who deal with the person as much as with the academic subjects (er..how do we measure that?) . We need robots full of quantifiable /measurable information rather than well balanced people equipped to nurture and develop our democracy. And to hell with the thousands who won’t even complete secondary education. OK , I got the picture. What a genius he is!
January 17th, 2008 at 1:09 am
So Peter Sutherland thinks education is grossly underfunded, but only at third level, according to his article, as he makes no reference to funding at primary or second level. He would also like to see the introduction of league tables; I would have thought that the Leaving Cert results were a more than adequate assessment marker and they are freely available.
if Peter Sutherland thinks third level is underfunded he should try managing a primary school!
If he truly wishes to do something for education he should use his undoubted influence to urge government to devote at least the OECD average percentage of GDP to education, with particular skewing towards the primary sector, which has always been starved of funds.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Peter Sutherland is very closely aligned to UCD, and is clearly doing a little running for UCD’s President.
Their is no doubt that the Irish education is amazing value and fit for purpose (something International benchmarks do not capture). Of course one could spend more, but would that improve outcomes? Whilst we spend less than elsewhere (look at the OECD figures), we do much better outcomes and offer our young people great futures (in terms of employment and quality of life). What exactly would we be trying to achieve by spending more money?
January 18th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I can’t quite figure out why every time it is suggested that universities are underfunded, there follows the assertion that fees should be reintroduced. There is a serious lack of logic here. If fees are reintroduced what is to stop Government from cutting back on public funding leaving universities as underfunded as before? In a country where there is a phobia about paying taxes and a resistance to pay for public services, government will always be tempted to shift investment away from any area that can be otherwise funded. Whatever arguments there are for the reintroduction of fees, and I’m deeply skeptical about them, the funding issue is a red herring.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Clearly Mr. Sutherland’s view of what constitutes a proper education system is some version of the current British one. It is not the U.S. model if we are to believe his view that intellectual ability not money should be the criteria for Thrid level entry and it is certainly not any European model given his obsession with league tables. What is Mr. Sutherland’s educational objective. The real objective of all those committed to school league tables is the creation of a free market in education where schools compete against each other for the most intellectually able students. It is a tragedy that 85 years after independence the representatives of the Irish haute bourgeoisie have nothing to offer apart from the clapped out notions of Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph.