School transport issues.

SeanW

Mods: feel free to move this to Commuting and Transport if you think it's more appropriate there.

Reading these forums over the years I see a lot of people claiming that Ireland "is a socially immature country" with "car centric culture" "car centric planning" etc. These claims are further twinned with support for very broad measures such as wallpapering all urban areas with universal 30kph speed limits and other extreme measures. One point that is often used to buttress these claims/demands is the mix of modes of transport used to get children to school. Proponents of these views cite the number of children driven to school, how that is supposedly too many, how it causes problems with traffic, parking etc, and cite the supposed lack of children cycling to school as some kind of problem that supposedly stems solely from the aforementioned problems of "car centric" culture/planning etc. People promoting this view often tend to blame motorists for traffic congestion around schools.

My reason for calling this view into question is that other countries - including countries that are much more car-dependent than Ireland - do not have the same problems with school transport as Ireland. As evidence, I will cite my familiarity with the United States and how they plan education, vs. one particular example of "planning" (a.k.a. organised chaos) in Limerick.

In the US it is not common for children to be driven to school. It happens but it's not the rule. The reason is simple - education is planned by each municipality and all publicly funded schools absolutely guarantee school places to children who live within a given district - and no-one else. The only exception to this rule is some municipalities have a policy of "busing," a social policy designed to distribute disadvantaged students to "better" schools further away and vice-versa. All public schools are free to attend, and all are non-denominational so there is no question of religious ethos; Jews, Atheists, Christians etc. can all (and do) attend the designated school. What that means for transport is that it is unusual for a student to have to be driven to school, as a municipality will also plan a school bus system around the schools for anyone who lives too far from their designated school to walk. Religious and fee-paying "private" schools do exist, but they are in all cases a luxury.

Compare and contrast that system to how things are often done in Ireland - parents often have to consider questions Americans never have to, like the religious ethos of the school, whether it's fee-paying, where it's located, how their child would get there, the admissions policy of the nearest school and whether or not the nearest school would even "have a place" for the child (which IMHO should simply not be a thing). In some parts - like Limerick - the situation is so bad that parents intending to send their children to secondary school have to fill out a CAO style form, and must list 11 possible schools their child might get a place in. They have to include schools that are stupidly far away, have a religious ethos they don't agree with, may charge fees they can't afford, or which may have a bizarre admittance rule that ultimately keeps the child out.

But the bizarre thing about this CAO style system is that it was actually a dramatic improvement over the unplanned chaos that preceded it. Yet if you tried to explain this to anyone who comes from a country where education is planned to any degree, they might look at you like you have two heads.

I thusly suggest that the anti-motorist lobby on here is quite simply putting the proverbial cart before the horse. In many cases, people on this board are choosing to blame people who drive their children to school for deeper systemic problems. Put another way, I suggest if Ireland actually planned education in any kind of coherent manner, fewer children would need to be driven to school and legal parking etc. could be provided in the fewer cases where it was necessary.

KrisW1001

Sorry, if you’re holding the USA up as an exemplar of educational planning, you are starting your argument from a tough position. And you’re not paying attention to the news if you think American schools are non-denominational. Not even Americans have the neck to claim their public schools are good.

Education is not uniformly planned in the USA, it’s extremely localised: if you happen to live in a rational, tolerant school district in an affluent area (which I guess you did as a skilled immigrant), then schooling is as good as it is here, and probably better in terms of sports. If not, it’s worse than anything you will find here. It is not the municipality, but the School District that pays for transportation, and typically, the school district receives 40%+ of its funds from local property taxes. That is an important point, because districts are independent, they do not pool funds. So, whether you’re in a good or bad school district is a zip code lottery, and crosstown bussing isn’t a shining example of inclusion: it’s a glaring sign that the system is broken. There should not be “good” and “bad” schools just because they are in “good” and “bad” neighbourhoods - in this country, like others, we push more resources into poor-neighbourhood schools to compensate for disadvantages; it has served us well.

Now the other half of your argument. Limerick is a uniquely bad situation in the State, and no other area has anything like this kind of problem. Everywhere else, living in the catchment area and having siblings already there are the primary factors for admission; pretty much the same as the US model, except that you can be in the catchment area of more than one school administration here.

It strikes me that you’ve picked the best example of one place and the worst of another to make your argument. That suggests a weak argument.

Look, nothing is totally bad, and the one positive aspect of American schooling is the common use of school buses. (It is not universal. Everything depends on what the district wishes to spend on bussing. Lots of kids still get driven to school, especially as they get older). We are pretty good at school bussing in rural areas, but we need to bring it into suburbs and cities, and stop the cycle of parents driving kids to school out of fear of them being struck by cars driven by other parents driving their kids to school.