Chapter 1 — Department of Education

Part 5 The inspection system

In the early part of her career, Dr McCabe was heavily critical of the schools, reporting findings very different from the relatively favourable conclusions in the Cussen Report just a few years earlier. She stated that she was ‘simply horrified at the conditions existing in the majority of the Schools’. However, her reports from the 1950s show a marked decline in detail with little of the critical commentary that had characterised the reports of the 1940s. While it is possible that improvements were made during her tenure, and that the schools were better resourced, it is also necessary to take into consideration the fact that from the late 1940s Dr McCabe was suffering from recurrent illness.

Although there is no definitive diagnosis of Dr McCabe’s condition, it is evident from medical reports in her Departmental personnel file that she suffered from severe depression for much of the period during which she held the position of Medical Inspector with the Department. This illness seems to have commenced in the late 1940s, with a severe episode in 1951 requiring hospital therapy. Unfortunately, over the following number of years Dr McCabe’s health did not improve and began to deteriorate seriously in the mid-1960s. Dr McCabe resigned in 1965.

Part 6 Innovations and Improvements

Before Kennedy, there was little thought given to a fundamental overhaul of the system. One of the few considerations of structural change is contained in the following brief statement. T O’R on 15th March 1967 wrote in an internal memo. A new development in recent years in a number of the Industrial Schools has been the introduction of the Group System. Under this system it is claimed that the children feel a greater degree of security, become more alert, make better progress at school, are generally more friendly and more easily overcome their handicaps. The Minister would be glad if Managers would give consideration to this new development with a view to its introduction, where possible, into their schools. 4.12 .24 noted that in a small number of schools, laudable efforts are being made to break the residential portion of the school into units and encouraged stronger efforts in this direction. One line of approach to the problem of the Industrial Schools is the provision of a Prevention Centre. The importance of the Prevention Centre will lie not only in the turning back of the youngsters from their first steps in delinquency and the caring for innocent youngsters from broken homes, but also in that it will reduce considerably the number of children who will be committed to industrial schools. This raises the question of the second line of approach. It is that the industrial schools will in future have to devote themselves more to rehabilitation type of work. This will mean that they will have to organise the children into smaller groups and so have to employ a much larger staff of skilled personnel. The children will, learn by doing (as Senator Quinlan mentioned in the Seanad debate on ‘Investment in Education’). It might be unwise to bring up the matter of industrial schools as we are in no position to defend our achievement as far as the size of grants goes.

Another rare example of this fundamental question being squarely addressed comes in a letter of response by the Department to criticisms put forward by the Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers in 1955. The slogan that ‘a poor home is better for a child than the best institution’ is alright as a catch cry but is certainly not true if is meant by a poor home a home of squalor, hunger and malnutrition, vice and bad example. People before using such slogans should become familiar with bad homes and with institutions such as industrial schools or orphanages which are conducted on proper lines. These latter, at least the industrial schools administered by this Department, have considerably improved in the last 12 of 15 years, mainly through (1) a consciousness on the part of the conductors following the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the R&I. School system of 1934-36, and the passage of the 1941 Children Act of the need for improvement standards in the schools, (2) efficient and regular inspection, (3) the Course in Childcare in 1953 for nuns engaged in Orphanages and Industrial Schools. The improvements resulting from this Course are becoming evident as time goes on. With regard to the recommendation of the Women’s Committee the following comments are made in the order set forth in the Joint Committee’s letter. 1.That the maximum number in any institution should not exceed 250. The only school which accommodates more than 250 is Artane. The question of breaking up that school into smaller schools was recommended by the Commission of Inquiry 1934-36 but nothing came if it mainly due to the opposition of the conductors and the extra huge expenditure involved. I consider that in fact 250 is altogether too big a number for a school and that 50-100 would be the ideal number. 2.Division of children into groups. Kilkenny Girls School (accommodation 130) and St. Georges Limerick (170) have introduced the group system. (Kilkenny in 1952 and Limerick quite recently). This means the grouping of the girls over 6 years of age in sections of 30 approx-each section under the care of a nun who acts as ‘House mother’. In Kilkenny each section has its own Dormitory, Dining Room, Living Room. I attach a description of the grouping system as given by Sr. Laurentia for the Kilkenny school at the Child Course held in Carysfort College in August, 1953. The group system is new to our schools. It involves the school in extra staff and in considerable expenditure to adapt the accommodation to the system. It is probable that with a little encouragement and coaxing form the Departments schools. The question of adopting it in boy’s schools, both senior and junior would present more difficulties than in the case of girl’s schools.

The schools’ population peaked in the late 1940s. There was a steady decline in numbers through the 1950s and the process accelerated in the 1960s. The Department of Education noted as early as 1951 that since 1945 there had been an average of 250 vacancies in the Boys’ Schools.

In 1955, the subject of closure was tentatively mentioned by the Secretary of the Department of Education in negotiations with representatives of the schools. In a letter from the Minister for Education to the Minister for Finance on 21st January 1965, the former noted ruefully that Finance had been urging closures for years and then continued: Naturally your main concern is economy while mine is the upbringing of children. Certain aspects of the matter of transferring children to other schools have to be carefully considered. Many children have god-parents in their school localities and quite a number of children attend schools, national, secondary and vocational outside the industrial school. It may not be possible to accommodate such children suitably if transferred to another district.

In 1950, there were 50 Industrial Schools. In the 1950s five schools closed: four senior boys schools – Baltimore (1950); Killybegs (1950); Carriglea (1954); and Greenmount, Cork (1959) and one girls school, Sligo (1958); but in the case of each of the boys’ schools there were particular reasons that were at least as significant as the general trend. The next closure was Birr, Offaly (1963). During 1964-70, 17 more schools, more than a third of the total, closed, including the senior boys’ schools at Upton, Glin and Clonmel, in each case with the full agreement of the Orders concerned. By the time of the Kennedy Report in 1970, another 13 had closed leaving a total of 29 still operating.

The impression is that the closures that did occur pre-Kennedy (1970) did not come about because the Department pursued a coherent policy and took a considered decision to bring them about. The closures happened because the Orders wished them. On 23rd May 1966, the Managers’ Association wrote to the Department: At their meeting on last Friday there was a consensus of opinion amongst the Resident Manager that most of the Schools will be forced to close. If the present system is not acceptable to the public or the Government the Managers are prepared to close the schools next year, because they feel that the strain of working under present-day conditions is too acute to be continued.

Making allowance for some element of bluff in this letter, it is unlikely that the schools would have expressly raised such a fundamental issue as closure unless they believed that matters had reached crisis point. In 1968, the Manager of Artane visited the Minister to warn him that the Christian Brothers had decided to close Artane, though this closure did not in fact occur until 1969.

One feature of the timing of most of the closures is that they coincided with the doubling in demand for secondary school places, which followed on the abolition of secondary school fees. This was announced suddenly by the Minister for Education, Mr O’Malley, in 1966 and came into effect in August 1967. As a result, enrolment in day secondary schools rose from 148,000 in 1966-67 to 239,000 in 1974-75.

Part 7 The beginnings of change

Both the public and the authorities began to lose confidence in the Industrial School system at the same time. The Christian Brothers believed the ‘public had turned against them’, the image of the schools having being damaged by ‘negative newspaper and television coverage ... and by criticism from professional sociologists, [and even from] the clergy and the bishops’. The Christian Brothers referred also to ‘Authorities charged with improving social matters’, who they felt had become ‘hostile to schools such as Artane... County Councils, the Department of Health and those various organisations involved with the care of children would prefer to put them in foster homes or with families, anywhere but in institutions such as Artane’.

At the same time, there were various practical improvements in the schools, mostly because of rising economic prosperity in the 1960s. The following contemporary account, from Michael Viney’s 1966 Irish Times series, provides some examples: A hundred boys is probably the most any one centre should contain, if the staff are to have any chance of treating them as individuals. So consideration of closing Upton and Letterfrack has not been without its ironies. For a hundred boys, more or less, is just what each of them has now. They were built, of course, to hold far more, and the present capitation system makes it uneconomic to run them at less than three-quarters full – about double their present population. Both Upton and Letterfrack have undergone major reconstructions and improvements in the last few years. The Department of Education has granted large sums to build or convert new classroom wings and the orders themselves have borrowed heavily from the banks to pay for other, very welcome improvements. So just as these schools have been brightened out of all recognition, their future has never seemed more uncertain. Reports and other indicators

In 1961 one of a set of national surveys, a wide-ranging study of Irish education and training by economic experts, was prepared by officials from the Department of Education in cooperation with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), under the chairmanship of the economist and ex-civil servant, Professor Patrick Lynch. It included a section dealing with the treatment of children in detention. This section criticised the operation of the schools attributing many of their defects to the inadequacy of the capitation grant and also the substantial surplus capacity within the schools, especially the girls schools, where there was only 37 percent utilisation of space.

In 1965 the Commission on Mental Handicap raised doubts about institutionalisation in a wider context. Its report observed at para 138: Orphans and unwanted and illegitimate children are a very vulnerable group. Many fail to realise their potential through loss of firm ties of affection, lack of stimulation and absence of suitable adults to provide a feeling of security and to meet their emotional and psychological needs. Legal adoption, where it is possible, is undoubtedly the most satisfactory method of dealing with the problem....family care is preferable to care in an institution.... We are well aware of the wonderful work carried out in these institutions and our regret is that because of a lack of appreciation of the psychological and emotional needs of children or because of inadequate staffing, the best results are not always achieved.

In September 1962 an Interdepartmental Committee was established to inquire into possible approaches to the prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders. The Committee was composed of senior officials of the Departments of Justice, Health, Education and Industry and Commerce. Its proceedings concerning Fr Moore’s views on Artane are discussed in the chapter on that institution (Volume I, Chapter 7).