My Irish Primary Education Review 2024 — July to December
The first half of 2024 in schools was not exactly filled with hope. With Special Education slowly but surely being stripped away and the world falling apart with war, could the second half of the year bring some hope?
July
When I write about the primary education system, I try my best to keep it general. I discuss the systematic failures that people working in schools identify with, but aren’t particularly sexy enough to make the media headlines. Free school books, free school buses and free school meals are ready-made headline grabbers, but arguing that Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act is preventing teachers from diverse backgrounds from applying for jobs in schools doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Given it was the summer holidays, the primary education system tends to take a break in the media with the exception of a family being forced to go to the media as they don’t have a place in a school for their children with additional needs. No school place is a sexy news story but my story about how my school appealed its 15 hour cut to SET Allocations to the NCSE isn’t a sexy story.
I spent a lot of the summer playing around with some AI tools to generate ready-made units of work, which teachers could use in their classroom every day. I made thousands of them covering everything from worksheets on almost every town in Ireland to a unit of work with lesson plans for every single school day of the year. They’re available on Mash.plus if you’re interested in using them. However, maybe I should used my AI programming skills to get them to generate sexier headlines for the failings of the primary education system. Or hire some decent spin doctors like the Minister.
August
It wouldn’t be the summer holidays in Ireland if there weren’t stories about lack of school places and lack of school buses, and this year didn’t disappoint. However, what there is a lack of is interesting stories about education itself.
No, instead it was Norma Foley still banging on about banning Smartphones in schools, the cost of hiring taxis to bring children to school, and the cost of school unifiorms.
I even found myself on the radio debating whether we should have single sex schools in Ireland or not. Whether that counts as educational, I don’t know but everyone is entitled to a summer break so I guess the education system deserves a month off, although the way this year review has gone so far, I’m beginning to wonder if 2024 was more about budget giveaways than pedagogy.
September
As we came back to school for the 2024–25 year, the scoping report into the heinous crimes committed by members of the Catholic clergy, and covered up by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church failed to make the majority of people think about sending their children into the buildings where children were sexually abused routinely less than a generation ago. I’m still baffled by the cognitive dissonance and the obsession that redress is all about money.
In fact, there seemed to be more calls for apologies from the textbook company, EDCO, than the church, because the textbook publisher had a chapter in their SPHE book, which lampooned a stereotype of an Irish family.
One of the schools named in the scoping report, had a lovely article published as they were about to become a co-educational Gaelcholaiste from a boys’ Christian Brothers’ school. There wasn’t a single mention of the abuse in the celebratory article. Oh, and the school remained under Catholic control.
I was almost glad to see that the only other main story involving schools in September was the constant stream of smartphone ban articles. If we could just do what we need to do with smartphones, this generation of young people might also be spared from looking at inappropriate and horrendous sex crimes in their youth.
October
If you’d told me the biggest story from Budget 2025 was going to be Norma Foley’s campaign on Smartphones, I wouldn’t have believed you. However, her advisory team are either very clever or very stupid as “Pouch Plan” was launched. The less said about the budget the better. Even the very silent stakeholders were baffled by how bad the budget was for primary education. Personally I have no idea why they were surprised.
However, nothing can forgive Foley’s advisors for trying their best to make her sound like she was down with the kids with a bluetooth joke that has to be read to believed. If you can’t bring yourself to doing that here it is: “‘I grew up before mobile phones, when Bluetooth was what you got after eating a Mr Freeze.”
The budget yielded nothing to help with the crisis in the teacher shortage, which was always a lingering story being denied by the Minister as an issue. It was interesting to read two articles in October about some barriers into the profession. The first was from a trainee teacher who claimed the Irish language is a barrier to working class people. It’s been met with dismay by many, particularly when it turned out the author went through the education system through the Gaelscoil.
The second was from three Irish teachers who discussed the role of religion as a barrier. Some of these teachers, by going public, will now face the real prospect of being unhireable in denominational schools. However, we shouldn’t worry for too much longer because, Minister Foley will save the day with another parent survey about patronage.
The defenders of the faith were doing everything in their power to stop their house of cards from falling by trying to make out that if religion goes from schools then we’ll all be teaching children pornography. The infamous video from the Natural Women’s Council had a very brief moment in the limelight. I watched the whole thing and I’ll be honest, I was a little uncomfortable for about ten minutes before the whole argument fell apart with conspiracy and moral panic. It didn’t stop Norma Foley from having to defend the curriculum. I have to admit I felt sorry for her and it was really nice to get a glimpse of, what I think, was the real Norma. My sympathies were short-lived when she went back to calling her mobile phone pouch plan a revolutionary mental health and wellbeing initiative.
There was also time for the media to turn on pesky teachers taking career breaks, as it was revealed there are over 1,000 positions unfilled in primary schools. I wrote an article almost exactly a year ago with why cancelling career breaks will do nothing and I offered some solutions, finishing with:
“The one thing we can’t afford to do is exactly what the government has been doing since 2014 when the issue of teacher shortages was first raised — and that’s to do nothing. However, unfortunately, I think that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
I expect I’ll be back here this time next year saying the same thing.
November
The General Election was finally called weeks after it being unofficially announced and Norma Foley’s first announcement in her manifesto was a significant €9m investment into primary school resources. As Conor Murphy noted, this was in contrast to the announcement of a tiny fraction of the budget held for phone pouches, which cost….€9m.
For the few weeks of the election run-up, the newspapers duly obliged the government parties by reporting about how great the government was. I have a piece of software that scans all the national newspapers every day for education-related news. It was interesting that half the local papers in the country were happy to share the news that solar panels will be installed in schools. I had roughly 13 versions of this story because half the counties in Ireland are getting them and the government press releases went to the local papers, where they reported almost word for word the same thing.
Of course, when it came to the media and the General Election the only story about education was that schools will close for the day. Yep…priorities.
You’d think the politicians would be making sure they watched their p’s and q’s in the run-up but Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil seemed determined to trip themselves up. First Peter Burke (FG) decided to ask Michael O’Leary to launch his campaign which resulted in him losing whatever teacher vote he might have had. One could have described O’Leary’s performance as a crisis, but thankfully Norma Foley believes that all crises are opportunities. Yes, a crisitunity!
Norma’s display in the education debate, where she mimicked a famous Simpsons quote, which was streamed on the INTO’s platform was about the only place to hear politicians talking about education, which has been woefully neglected in the main debates. I was particularly interested in the question on patronage where none of the panel knew how many multi-denominational schools there were and Minister Patrick O’Donovan decided that he wants his kids to go to a Catholic school because he wants to outsource sacrament preparation to teachers. If Fine Gael had an iota of a chance of a number on my ballot form, that was the end of my support.
It seems Foley’s crisitunity was fairly accurate in the end because the election results proved that despite everything, they have the opportunity again to govern.
However, Norma Foley did get into a bit of hot water over her phone pouch plan when it was revealed it’s going to need a regular €2m top up every year. Meanwhile, Australia announced it was doing something meaningful by banning social media for under-16s. That’s an actual investment in wellbeing, and it will cost nothing. I’m sure Foley will use that as an opportunity, or is that crisis?
December
As we reach the season of goodwill where, to quote another famous Simpsons episode, Bart Simpson says “Christmas is the time of year when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ,” a school in Lucan decided to breach children’s constitutional rights saying the quiet bit out loud when they wrote to parents that “pupils were required to participate in all subject areas and attend all school religious ceremonies.”
The school is going to review their ethos statement but if the only thing that’s going to change is removing that statement, and no action, it’s going to be a missed opportunity. The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell system will continue.
Personally I was disappointed their patron body didn’t step in with some sort of statement because, ultimately, this isn’t about the school. Patron bodies insist that schools uphold their ethos and they put the schools in these difficult situations.
To be fair, the media covered the story but one thing they haven’t been too interested in is who is going to be the next Minister for Education. I decided to do a shortlist of my top 10 possibilities, which Fine Gael’s Patrick O’Donovan my favourite (in the gambling sense) to get the post. However, with the dynamic duo if Fianna Fail and Fine Gael deciding to support Verona Murphy as the Ceann Comhairle, who knows anymore? Michael Lowry might be put into the role and finally answer the calls from 2021 to provide air filtering systems for classrooms.
It’s only when I got through the year that was in primary education, it is apparent how neglected primary education was in 2024. While I watched the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael politicians defending their performance by listing all the free things they’d given to parents, I didn’t realise that this was the extent of government action on primary education for the entire year. Given the election, I’m not convinced we are going to see much change in 2025 and the only thing I’ll have to change in my review of the year will be the name of the Minister.
I guess the only thing I have left to do is thank you for your patience during the year with me. I was thinking to myself that my podcasts were getting a bit repetitive but when I look back at the year, I can see why. The most exciting things happening in education seem to be with younger teachers on Instagram, where a community of education influencers has been building for a number of years. I think these teachers are great and they are finding a lot of joy in the classroom, helping each other out in areas like literacy with the Science of Reading. With Twitter, or X, falling apart, many of the old heads have started looking into Instagram, and some braver souls are heading to TikTok, so it might be interesting to see how the generations mix.
While our friends at second level are battling against the role of AI in the Leaving Cert, I’m hoping to use 2025 to find more ways to use AI to help teachers in their work. I have few projects planned so I look forward to sharing them with you. In the meantime, I hope you’re having a fantastic break whatever you’re doing. I’ll chat to you again in 2025!
