Chapter 1 — Department of Education

Part 4 The Cussen Commission

The Cussen Commission included a number of further recommendations with regard to education, including sending children within the system to local National Schools where possible. This policy of sending children to local schools allowed for greater contact with other children. At the time of the Report, the Commission estimated that approximately 33 percent of the schools did send their students to National Schools. This figure did not increase substantially until the 1970s.

Cussen also recommended recognising Industrial Schools as National Schools when local National Schools were unable to accommodate the children from Industrial Schools. The object was to attract more teachers into the Industrial Schools, as there was a stigma associated with working in them. The full implementation of this recommendation did not occur until 1945 when a Department of Education submission to the Government made clear the Department’s objection to the persistent inequality between National Schools and certified schools.

A number of recommendations in the Cussen Report refer to the problem of the appropriate care and education of children with intellectual disabilities. Figures provided by the Resident Managers to the Cussen Commission show that in August 1934 there were 56 intellectually disabled children (10 boys and 46 girls) in certified schools and an additional 46 children with physical disabilities (26 boys and 20 girls). However other figures show that this may have been a gross underestimation.

The Cussen Report makes reference to the general absence of legislation regarding the care and treatment of people with intellectually disabilities in Ireland and the consequent difficulty in effectively dealing with the issue within the certified school system. Overall the Report was against the idea of sending intellectually and physically disabled children to Industrial Schools. The amalgamation of children with differing educational needs was recognised as unsatisfactory and the benefits of educating these children separately was emphasised in the report.

Recommendation 33 advocated the establishment of an institution specifically for the care of intellectually disabled children with separate departments for the physically disabled under the auspices of the Department of Education. The Report also recommended that, pending a medical report, judges be empowered to send these children to specialised institutions instead of the schools: If it is found from the report of the examining doctor that the child is physically or mentally abnormal or if the doctor is unable to form a definite opinion the justice should, if the case is one calling for detention in a school, order the child to be sent to the institution especially certified for such cases.

The Secretary General of the Department of Education and Science told the Investigation Committee that ‘the Government decided...that it shouldn’t be made mandatory to have an assessment, I think that was in 1956...’. The number of intellectually and physically disabled children within the Reformatory and Industrial School system is unknown. No medical or psychological research material exists to support the figures supplied by the Cussen Report. The Kennedy Committee established that there was a significant level of educational disadvantage in the schools and there were no remedial resources available.

Br Burcet was both a teacher (1954-55) and a principal (1956-69) in Artane Industrial School. In his evidence he describes the large numbers of physically and mentally disabled children in Artane during his tenure and contends that there was a change in the type of boy sent to Artane in the late 1950s and early 60s. It is his belief that with the development of social welfare services in Ireland the demographic of the resident population of Artane began to change ‘I had a sense that more disturbed children were coming into us in the 1960s, certainly in the 1960s.’

Br Burcet attempted to introduce a special needs programme within the school. He described the resistance from the Department of Education in relation to any deviation from the National Schools curriculum. His belief was that the physical welfare of the children was the primary concern of the Department So, if you are asking me how did the Department see Artane, they were looking at it from a physical care philosophy. I would say they were quite happy.

From the 1950s, the Department’s annual reports indicated a concern that secondary education should be provided to children who would be able to benefit from it. For example, the Report of 1954–55 stated that: ‘every effort is being made to make post-primary education available to those pupils suited to such’ but the evidence is that it happened in few cases.

The annual report of 1932-33 noted that ‘a few schools have afforded promising girls special opportunities for higher education’ and this trend continued in the following years. But a 1952 document, noted that St Joseph’s, Tralee was the only boys Industrial School to send its children to secondary school. With regards to the numbers of children, approximately 250 Industrial School pupils were in post-primary education, either in secondary tops, secondary schools, and vocational schools or in vocational classes confined to Industrial School pupils. The gender breakdown is striking: 11 percent of the girls (i.e. 180) against 4½ percent of the boys (i.e. 70).

The proportion of Industrial School pupils receiving post-primary education was always very low, and negligible in the case of Reformatories. As of 1963, out of the seven schools for senior boys, only two sent boys out to local secondary or vocational schools and only one provided a full vocational course within the institution. Conversely, almost all the girl schools, with only one or two exceptions, had pupils attending outside secondary or vocational schools. In some cases the secondary school was conducted by the religious community and was located beside the Industrial School; generally, however, the girls in full-time post-primary education were receiving it outside the institutions.

It is not until 1950-51 that the Department’s annual reports started to provide data on the numbers who obtained an Intermediate Certificate or Leaving Certificate:

Year	Boys/Inter	Girls/Inter	Boys/Leaving	Girls/Leaving
1951	0	5	0	2
1952	0	11	0	1
1953	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
1954	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
1955	4	21	0	5
1956	1	13	0	4
1957	1	18	2	2
1958	1	20	0	3

The Cussen Report noted that in some schools children were retained beyond the age of 16 years (the age of discharge) so as to enable them to derive benefit from a special course of training, and that such training was undertaken at the sole expense of the school. The Report advised that the Minister be given power, where he was satisfied the circumstances so warrant, to authorise a resident to remain in a school up to the age of 17 years, subject to the payment of an appropriate grant and this proposal was implemented by the Childrens Act 1941. For the remainder of the 1940s, applications were very small, ranging from two to seven per year. The numbers of successful applications rose slightly in the 1950s, peaking at 23 a year, in a school system then catering for 4,000 or so children. The reasons for the extensions, according to annual reports for the period, were to pursue secondary, vocational or commercial courses and occasionally to sit the civil service examinations or attend nursing training.

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.