Q.1 or 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Q.1 or 2 - Essay Example The National Board was ‘to look with peculiar favour’ on applicants for aid for schools jointly managed by Roman Catholics and Protestants. While many of the schools which were taken into connection with the Board in the early years were jointly managed, the main Christian churches put pressure on the government to allow aid to be given to schools under the management of individual churches.1 This pressure was so effective that, by the mid-nineteenth century, only 4% of national schools were under mixed management.2 In terms of the curriculum, the main principle was that schools should offer ‘combined moral and literary instruction’.3 While the Board would decide the curriculum for moral and literary instruction, the patron of each school would determine the form and content of religious instruction in the schools under his patronage. The Rules for National Schools to the present day set down that ‘no pupil shall receive or be present at any religious instruction of which his parents or guardians do not approve’4 and also ‘that the periods of formal religious instruction shall be fixed so as to facilitate the withdrawal of [such] pupils’.5 This means that the National System had its ultimate goal to help accommodate children of different religions. That is why, the Christian dominate churches had to enforce the other dominations to be ready to accommodate children of mixed religions. This was pushed about by the Christian churches until it came to pass with management being of mixed creed. In an article presented by Thomas Walsh regarding the children’s curriculum in the primary schools between 1900 and 1999, he describes the conceptualization of the childhood education as a process that is undergoing and it takes time to be implemented fully. In an announcement by Ruairi Quinn, Minister for Education and Skills, on the junior certificate reforms, he commented that, â€Å"We already know that significa nt numbers of first years do not make progress in English and Maths – the key building blocks of learning.† He added that, â€Å"Too many students ‘switch off’ in second year and never reconnect to learning.   We know that the experience of third year students is dominated by preparations for the Junior Certificate exams where the focus narrows to the performance in the examination rather than the quality of the learning.   It is high time we changed this – for the good of our students and our teachers.† In this statement, Ruairi conforms that the numbers of children who do not make it in the key subjects in Ireland are quite alarming. As a result the outcome is that a lot of students lack the essential skills to upgrade them and that is why they never relate to knowing that learning is essential. When it comes to the final continuous assessment tests, what comes up is that what teachers focus on is more of the students passing their tests rather that knowing what they are being taught, this adds up to the quality of education is more understated. The accounting feature is that the teachers during their teaching time in class they focused on spoon-feeding the students what is likely to come in the exams, thus they are more exam oriented that quality oriented. Ruairi stressed in the fact that this is a trend that ought to change for better future of Irish

Externalities Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Externalities - Assignment Example Externalities Before considering the five questions we must first recognize that the example of gas emission by a local power plant is that of a negative externality. This is because emissions of such gases cause pollution which is harmful for humans, animals and plants. Although the society is not involved in the emission of these gases but it has to bear the costs (Perloff 2003). Hence the given example is a perfect case of a negative externality. 1. Although there are a number of ways to combat the negative externality, a policy maker must carefully decide on a policy before implementing it. There are a few costs and benefits of each policy and the policy maker should first carry out a Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) of all the alternative policies before their final decision. Blinder (1987) has the following to say about solving the negative externality problem: â€Å"Especially when faced with environmental externalities, economists have almost universally objected to government re gulations that mandate specific technologies (especially â€Å"best-available technology†) or business practices. These approaches make environmental cleanup much more expensive than it has to be because the cost of reducing pollution varies widely from firm to firm and from industry to industry. A more efficient solution is to issue tradable â€Å"pollution permits† that add up to the target level of emissions. Sources able to cheaply curtail their negative externalities would drastically cut back, selling their permits to less flexible polluters.† Another solution proposed by Coase (1960 in his Coase Theorem is: â€Å"Under perfect competition, once government has assigned clearly defined property rights in contested resources and as long as transactions costs are negligible, private parties that generate or are affected by externalities will negotiate voluntary agreements that lead to the socially optimal resource allocation and output mix regardless of how t he property rights are assigned† Hence the two possible policies that a policy maker can adopt are using tradable pollution permits or government defined property rights. 2. In the first policy the government will give licenses to firms to pollute. Each license will specify the level of pollution allowed to the firm. Depending on its level of pollution a firm can buy a certain license. Firms that pollute less than the permissible level can trade their license with those firms who cannot keep their pollution levels low. In this way firms are given an incentive to pollute less (Bamford, Brunskill, Cain, Grant, Munday, Walton 2002). The second policy assumes that there are negligible transactions costs. According to Sloman (2007) making someone the owner of the air around the power plant eliminates the effect of a negative externality. Here the two parties involved are the power plant producing the negative externality and the society living in the vicinity of the power plant tha t is affected by the emissions. If the power plant owns property rights to the air then the society pays the power plant to reduce pollution by lowering its production to the optimal level. However if the society is the owner then the power plant will have to pay compensating money to the society for the pollution they cause by increasing production from the optimal level. 3. If the policy maker implements the tradable permits for gases emission it will have benefits for the power plant and government apart from reduced