Towards a Better Future

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Chapter Twelve: Conclusion CHAPTER TWELVE Conclusion Irish schooling faces significant challenges into the future. Ireland’s is not a perfect system, no more than any other schooling system in the world. While perfection is not achievable, it is incumbent on every society to apply its best efforts to ensuring that the school system is as good as possible so that that this and future generations are assisted at achieving their potentials. The eleven chapters of this review paint a very creditable picture of how Irish schooling policy and provision has been evolving and of the manner in which this is being achieved. The various stakeholders and educational partners in this small island state have focussed constructively in establishing the present structure. Each of the headings reviewed in the chapters indicates that Ireland’s educational system is on the cusp of major attempts at reform. Building on accumulated achievements, it is poised for qualitative breakthroughs on a range of fronts. As detailed in the foregoing chapters,the agenda for necessary advances and improvements in our schooling system is clear. The crucial contemporary question is that of achieving it as the country emerges from a painful recession and as the key economic indicators improve. An underlying, dynamic pulse of Ireland’s educational system is the interest in, and concern for educational improvement by parents, teachers and policy-makers. The achievement of major educational reform, in a sustainable way, has been shown to be a demanding challenge in all societies. A number of prerequisites is needed to help promote success. These include the quality of prevailing policies and how they have been arrived at. Good communication on the proposed advantages of the proposed changes is integral to the process. A sense of engagement and ownership needs to be cultivated among key practitioners. Appropriate training and capacity development may be required for implementers of reform. The timing of reforms and the gradation span for change needs to be well planned. The administrative structures need to be such that this can be seen to facilitate implementation. Integral to the whole question of sustainable improvements is the judicious planning of policy initiatives, and the budgeting for the necessary resources, to make the right things happen, in the right ways and at the right times. It is rare to get all such pre-requisites to full satisfaction. This review nevertheless indicates that many of them are on track in Ireland. The weakest of the pre-requisites relates to the governance and administrative structure and the inadequate resources available for a strategic development — 183 —
Towards a Better Future: A Review of the Irish School System programme in education. With regard to governance and administrative structures, it has been a striking feature of the school system that there is no intermediate tier of administration between the Department of Education and Skills and the individual school, albeit the ETBI fulfils some such role for about 35% of post-primary schools (254/735). Over the last forty years, a number of attempts were made to establish such a middle tier, without success. The lack of such a tier places a heavy burden on the administration of individual schools. Many of the changes envisaged in current plans for the conduct of schools emphasise school planning, school self-evaluation and school communities working in collaborative, collegial ways. In line with international trends, significant emphasis is being placed, in Ireland, on the quality of educational leadership. Within that, the emphasis “ is being particularly placed on the leadership of the core functions of the school – teaching and learning. However, Ireland has inherited an older model of school leadership, whereby the principal and deputy principal (if one exists) carry forward a multiplicity of duties that seriously impede close engagement with the leadership of teaching and learning. The duties involve relationships with parents, pupils, staff, procurement, maintenance of premises, relationships with the DES, examination agencies etc., and a great deal of bureaucratic activity. As referenced repeatedly in the In line with international trends, significant emphasis is being placed, in Ireland, on the quality of educational leadership. Within that, the emphasis is being particularly placed on the leadership of the core functions of the school – teaching and learning. ” preceding chapters, this exerts a huge clogging influence on the work of real educational leadership. Many school leaders experience great stress in coping with this very varied and burdensome workload. Indeed, there is evidence that the post of principal is not now attractive to many highquality teachers, who see it as an unwelcome distraction from their core educational interests. However it is achieved, remedy is needed in this area and in the characterisation of responsibility posts in schools, if the aspired-for quality of educational leadership is to be realised. Another legacy issue from the past is the question of what a teacher’s contract entails. Irish teachers have a very good record in devoting voluntary time to school cultural events and sports. However, increasingly, the teacher’s contract is being interpreted as his/her allocated teaching hours in the school. This tends to fragment teachers’ sense of professional identity, leading to internal tensions and incoherences. An unfortunate, but by no means an infrequent, consequence is that principals seeking to involve staff in school activities such as school planning, collaborative subject teaching, school self-evaluation activities etc. can be faced with significant obstacles in co-operation. The socalled “Croke Park hours” were an attempt to establish the time for such planning activities, but they — 184 —
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Towards a Better Future

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