Chapter 1 — Department of Education

Part 1 The functions of the Department

The Minister for Education derived further powers from the Children Act 1908, sections 54-84, which included the authority to: determine the amount of the government contributions towards the expenses of children; sanction alterations in buildings; discharge (with or without conditions) or transfer inmates; allow the removal of a child by emigration; or remit payments towards the child’s maintenance ordered to be made by the parent.

The Children (Amendment) Act 1941 gave the Minister the power to direct the removal of a Resident Manager. This power which was very occasionally invoked to bring pressure to bear on the management of the schools to remove the Manager.

Part 2 The structure of the Department of Education

Throughout the period under consideration, the unit dealing with schools was the Reformatory and Industrial Schools Branch or RISB. This division was responsible for overseeing the certified school system and was also responsible for the administration of the detention centre in Marlborough House. This Branch predated independence and changed little following the establishment of the Free State.

The RISB occupied a lowly place in the Department’s hierarchy. Supervising the RISB and the primary schools unit, as well as other units, was an Assistant Secretary, who was subject only to the Secretary of the Department, but it is likely that the RISB received little of his attention. Again, compared with other branches, for instance the Primary Schools unit, which had a Principal Officer as their head, the head of the RISB was, until the reform of 1971, a relatively junior official. During the period 1941-65, he was usually at or about Assistant Principal level. The only other figure in the RISB at even a medium level was the Medical Inspector, an important and central position held during the 1940-64 period by Dr Anna McCabe.

An increased workload for the branch was brought about by the changes created by the Children Act 1941. For instance: a medical inspection was established; capitation grants were to be paid for under-sixes, teachers of literacy subjects in the schools had to be assessed in order to receive recognition as national teachers; and the Department had to allocate half of parental contributions to local authorities instead of sending the entire amount to the Exchequer. Thus the workload increased and, consequently, the level of clerical assistance had to be augmented. As of 1943 (and after 1943 there were no changes until the early 1970s), the RISB’s establishment was as follows: Inspector (Assistant Principal); Medical Inspector (a qualified doctor); Staff Officer Grade I (approximately equivalent to a higher executive officer); Clerical Officers (two); Writing Assistants (two); Stenographer; Part-time Parental Money Collectors (two).

According to a 1960 organisation and management survey of the RISB, carried out in 1959, by P Ó Maitiú, a principal in the Department, during the period 1943-59, 85 percent of the RISB’s time was spent on five main routine clerical tasks: Collecting and accounting for parental monies 25% Filing and registration 20% Applications for release of children 20% Check of county council accounts 10% Preparation of annual report 10%

Mr R MacConchradha, a Higher Executive Officer in prisons administration but formerly in the Department of Education, wrote on 20th April 1968 to Mr McCarthy, his superior in the Department for Justice. Mr MacConchradha expresses his views frankly: Even at the risk of breaking confidence, may I say that the Industrial School system has been centrally administrated in a very plodding way, with little sympathetic involvement or thought for the children. Finances have been ungenerous for years and what forward thinking there was, came from individuals in the conducting communities. The lot of the children, especially the boys, is very sad and there is an unbelievably entrenched ‘status quo’ to be overcome, not least in the Department of Education, if there is to be any change for the better.

Further evidence of the unimportance assigned to this field is the lack of written information regarding its role within the Department; for instance: Despite a number of institutional histories of the Department of Education, to date none have explored the role of the Department in relation to reformatory and Industrial Schools. Nor does O’Connor, a former secretary of the Department of Education mention reformatory or industrial schools in his personal reflections on his role in that Department between 1957 and 1968. Likewise renewed histories of the Department of Local Government and Public Health and from 1947, onwards the Department of Health (now Health and Children) and Department of Local Government (now Environmental and Local Government), do not explore the child welfare dimension of their work.

However following the publication of the Kennedy Report, the RISB became the fulcrum for instituting the changes recommended in the Report and it underwent restructuring. The section was renamed ‘Special Education (2)’ in 1972 and a review of the staffing structure in the Special Education Section was undertaken in November 1973. The review concluded that the staffing situation was inadequate and that the inspection system was hampered by this staff shortage. In 1975, the was the post of Child Care Advisor was created.

In general, the Department of Education was regarded as a conservative Department producing little by way of policy. Even on the wider fronts of primary and secondary education, its main concern lay with curricular content rather than wider social justice issues, such as what today would be called access to education. Further, the Department ‘enjoyed a reputation for secrecy’ and this secrecy would have had the effect of rendering it difficult for any countervailing pressure to that of the Church, even had there been any, to assert itself.

In the case of Reformatory and Industrial Schools the conservative tendency was exacerbated by the fact that the unit with full-time responsibility for the schools was located at such a low level in the Department hierarchy.

The unit did not initiate reform and did not confront the vested interests that reform would have stirred up.

The Department had the power of fixing the capitation fee and in theory this power gave it considerable control over the institutions However, the Department did not use such increases as an opportunity to impose changes of policy on the schools. When the Department succeeded in providing increased funding for the schools, it communicated in non-specific terms its wish to see improvements made in the standard of care provided to the children in the schools. For instance the Departmental circulars to Resident Managers announcing the increases in 1947, 1951, 1952 and 1958 stated the Minister’s expectation that, with the improved financial position, schools would effect, without delay, substantial improvements in the standard of diet, clothing and maintenance of the children. There is no evidence to show that these broad admonitions were followed up by attempts to verify that these substantial improvements had actually materialised. Few circulars were as specific as the following (Circular 1/1952 (10th March 1952)): The Minister trusts that consequent on the improvements in the financial position of the schools as a result of the increase of 5/- weekly in 1951 and of this increase of 6/- weekly in the amount of the Capitation Grants that the Managers of the Schools will be in a position to effect substantial all round improvements where necessary. Each child should get as a minimum one pint of milk daily, the full ration of butter and sugar, and 4 to 6 ozs of meat at each meal at which meat is served. It is desirable, that the children’s breakfast should include an egg, sausage, rasher, tomato or other suitable relish and that the dinner should be a substantial meal consisting of soup (where practicable), meat, vegetables (including potatoes) to be followed by a dessert such as pudding, jelly stewed or raw fruit, cereal.

The circular met a polite but prompt rebuff in the form of a message from a meeting of the Managers’ Association (letter from Chairman to Department, 31st March 1952), which said that, given the prices, this ‘recommendation’ was not ‘practical’. Indeed as the Department of Education submitted; Evidence provided to the Commission by Mr Granville also underlines the dominant role that school authorities continued to play [into the 1980s] in the operation of residential homes and special schools post-Kennedy. The religious orders, it is clear, remained the ultimate decision-makers.

The real authority lay with the schools and the religious, because they owned and managed the institutions, and their constant claim was that the State under-resourced the Congregations in carrying out the State’s duty. One example of what a later generation would call ‘agency capture’, where a regulatory body is effectively controlled by the body it is supposed to regulate, may be seen in the way in which the Resident Managers’ Association looked confidently to the Department to champion them against third-party criticisms. For instance, the Association asked to meet the Minister for Education to discuss: (2) The extract, from Circular Letter No. 7/52 issued by the Department of Health, which reads — ‘It is generally agreed that the institution is a bad substitute for the normal home life for children. It is recognised in the existing Regulations, which prescribe that Public Assistance Authorities shall not send a child to a certified school if the child can be suitably boarded out. Every effort should therefore be made to have children placed in suitable foster homes before having recourse to their maintenance in an institution.’ (3) The uncalled for and offensive remarks regarding Industrial and Reformatory Schools made by some District Justices and published in the newspapers.