Tánaiste defends Irish record on educational spend [advertiser.ie]
- Published: 10 September 2010
The Tanaiste and Minister for Education and Skills, Mary Coughlan was in Kilkenny this week where she defended the government’s record on spending on education.
The government was slammed in a recent OECD report published this week which stated that the Irish government ranked 29th out of 33 countries for their investment in education amounting to just 4.7 per cent of the GDP.
“The government spend on education in this country is above average when taken in context,” the Tanaiste told the Kilkenny Advertiser.
“And although we are in very difficult economic times, my department continues to invest in special education, replacement of teachers and in capital programmes, ie school buildings. We have also invested heavily in capital technology and I know that other ministerial colleagues of mine have had to give up a lot in their departments in order for the government to be able to do this. We have to look at the positives in times like these. In Ireland our literacy levels are very good and because of our significant investment we offer a broad variety of curriculum choices to students unlike the UK where my ministerial counterpart has been criticised for having a too-focussed education system.”
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