Chapter 1 — Department of Education

Part 4 The Cussen Commission

A number of the Cussen Report recommendations with regard to training came from a report entitled ‘Report on the Occupational Training provided in the Senior Boy’s Industrial Schools and in Glencree Reformatory’, which was compiled by four Departmental inspectors as part of the Cussen Committee’s Inquiry and was published as Appendix H of their Report.

The Commission was largely dissatisfied with the provision of training in the certified schools. The relevance of certain trades and the validity of the instruction provided were questioned, noting that there was a ‘complete absence of fully qualified instructors’. With regard to agricultural training the Commission found that ‘The training in farming is unsatisfactory, the work being unorganised with no systematic instruction in field or in the classroom’. The Commission also feared that the children were being treated as unpaid labourers and received no educational value for their time on the farm. Cussen consequently recommended the employment of a full-time farm manager with sufficient expertise allowing him to act as instructor. Cussen (para 57) advocated a wage to be held in trust for those children working in the schools, stating that: as the labour of the inmates is of some value to them it should be provided that a special portion of the cash value of the work of the girls for whom grants have been paid should be placed to their credit and made available for them on leaving.

The implementation of this recommendation did not occur. No record of a discussion of it within the Department has been discovered.

As with agricultural training, the motivation for training children in a number of technical disciplines seemed to be predicated upon the interests of the schools. The Report stated (at para 111) ‘It appears to us that in the majority of the schools the trades taught – many of which are obsolescent – have in view the needs of the institution rather than the future of the boys’.

Cussen recommended (para 23) therefore that more suitable and relevant crafts should be introduced in agricultural districts such as woodwork, thatching and harness making. Geographical proximity in relation to training was considered very important Schools in the vicinity of cities and industrial centres should be set aside for the teaching of special trades, and pupils in other Industrial Schools where similar facilities are not available should be transferred to these schools, if they are considered likely to benefit by a course of industrial training.

In the case of agricultural instruction, Cussen recommended the careful selection of tradesmen to train the children. and that the Department establish special courses to train instructors in the methods of teaching. In order to ensure that the training received by the pupils was both worthwhile and relevant the Cussen Report advocated regular occupational training inspections by inspectors of the Technical Instruction Branch of the Department.

After the Cussen Report, consistent criticism of the schools’ training can be seen in the annual reports of the Department of Education. These reports observed once again ‘the work turned out is principally for the use of the schools. The annual reports from this time also show that there was a continuing difficulty in placing the boys in employment following their training. The visitation report for Artane, 8-13th December 1952, took a rather different approach to this subject, remarking happily: ‘Our institutions owe a great deal to those boys who work full time at their trades. Their work is of great financial advantage to each establishment.’

In 1946 the Minister for Education enquired as to the suitability of the trades taught. He questioned that a pupil in Artane Industrial School was being taught gardening, which he felt ‘was not a suitable occupation in this day and age’. He requested that the matter of teaching trades in general be looked into. A Departmental memorandum was compiled in response to the Minister’s request, outlining the challenges facing the Resident Managers in this area, not least of which was finding suitable employment for the children. The memo went on to warn that if the Department ‘interferes much in the matter there might be a danger of the Managers trying to transfer their responsibility to the Department’. The memo also alluded to the severe criticism the Department had faced in 1952 from the Committee on Youth Unemployment for its failure to implement the recommendation of the Cussen Report with regard to industrial training. The author of the memo recommended that enquiries be made to the schools regarding: what trades were taught in the years 1943, 1944, 1945; the numbers of boys released into the trades taught; and the number of boys who were sent into different trades to the ones taught.

Significantly, the Artane statistics collected in response to these inquiries indicated that all, or nearly all, the boys went to employment in the trades in which they were trained. The gardening and tailoring figures for Greenmount, Carriglea and Clonmel, however, show that a significant number of boys did not end up in the trades in which they had been trained after they left their school.

In February 1955, the Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers wrote to the Department recommending that qualified teachers should be provided to train the children in trades. Over a decade later, the situation appears to have remained unaltered. In 1966 a delegation from the Junior Chamber of Commerce was sent to Artane Industrial School to ascertain what could be done to help. Their report identified difficulties with the industrial training provided, specifically that the workshops and equipment were out of date. The authors of the report considered the training the boys received was not adequate and would not allow them to achieve employment in their craft. It also commented that, even if a boy became proficient in a trade, his training would not be recognised by a trade union.

About the same time, a letter of 10th February 1966 by Department of Education, replying to a letter from Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers, stated: In the matter, however, of entry of industrial school pupils to Coláiste Mhuire, Cathal Brugha Street, an Agricultural School or College, Commercial School or the Civil Service, it would be extremely unusual for any person to enter any of these before at the very least seventeen years of age. The normal entry to them would be at about eighteen years of age. On the other hand, it is unusual for children to remain in industrial schools after sixteen, which is the statutory term of their committal. There is, however, another reason why it would be unlikely that children from industrial schools should enter such institutions as you mention. It is that entry is by competition, usually on the basis of a written examination and that the great majority of children in industrial schools are there on the grounds of ‘lack of proper guardianship’. This means that they come from unsettled homes; from which most of them have not been regular attendees at school and so are educationally retarded. Their chances at a competitive examination are therefore small indeed and so, as far as I know, there are none of them at the institution mentioned.

In earlier decades, some individual trade unions seem to have had a policy of preventing employers from recognising such training, or counting it as part of apprenticeship, and giving jobs on the basis of it, thus in large measure rendering it pointless (Cussen Report, para 123). The trade unions were presumably protecting their members by upholding the traditional means of entry. However in 1968 the Department of Education was advised by the Department of Labour that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions was concerned that career guidance and apprenticeship training did not appear to be receiving sufficient attention in the schools judging by the attainments of the ex-pupils of Industrial Schools in later life. They recommended the establishment of fully trained career guidance officers and the re-assessment of apprenticeship training.

• Cussen had stated that the whole system of training had needed revision. What followed, however, in terms of Departmental policy was a piecemeal set of circulars, and advisory actions which resulted in little change. In a statement to the Commission in 2006 the Department acknowledges that it did not give this matter ‘sufficient attention’.

The Cussen Commission were deeply unhappy with the schools’ provision of aftercare, which was intended to support the placing of children in trades and occupations for which they have received training in the schools. The Christian Brothers were cited as particularly negligent in their duties: We are not satisfied as to the adequacy of the methods of supervision and aftercare of children discharged from these schools, particularly in the case of boys leaving the Industrial Schools which are under the management of the Christian Brothers.

Figures taken from the Cussen Report for the years 1932-33 illustrate what happened to both boys and girls who left Reformatories and Industrial Schools after their periods of detention:

Occurrence after discharge	Industrial Schools	Reformatories
Returned home	148	14
Sent to employment	552	5
Retained awaiting employment	30	0
Recalled by Manager	26	0
Returned of own accord	39	4
Could not be traced	2	4
Total	730	19