A Love Letter to the new Minister for Education

Despite my detective work, it looks like I was completely wrong about who the next Minister for Education was going to be and it’s Helen McEntee who is our education minister.

Join me as I write a letter telling Helen McEntee what I would love to see happening in the education system as she takes over from a depressing almost-decade of neglect.

Transcript
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Hello, you are very welcome to if I were the minister for education from on shot dot net, a regular podcast where I dive into the world of primary education in Ireland and let you know what I would do if I were the minister for education. This is Simon Lewis speaking. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider subscribing to my fortnightly newsletter, where I go through some of the news from Irish primary education and beyond from my own perspective. And I also give some hints and tips from the classroom, some technology tips and other bonus materials that's at onshaw. net slash subscribe. On this week's show, I am writing a love letter. Don't worry, it's not that kind of love letter. It's a letter where I tell the new Minister for Education what I would love to see happening in the Irish primary education system under the new government. Now, despite my detective work and I went through a top 10 possibilities, actually it was a top 13 possibilities of who the next minister for education was. I was completely wrong. Even this the new minister for education is Helen McEntee and congratulations to her. But she didn't even feature in my top 10, never mind my top 13. She was completely off my radar. And I hope you don't take this the wrong way that's you, the listeners, and maybe this tells me how little I believe the ministry means in terms of importance to politicians, but I honestly didn't consider Helen McEntee for the ministry simply because she's the deputy leader of Fianna Ghael, and I expected her to be given the a more senior position. And when I say a senior position, I really don't like the fact that education isn't considered to be, I suppose it's a senior position, but one of the minor senior positions in the party. And I don't know, maybe that says a lot about how Ireland and how the Irish population value the education system. When you look at other countries, That have prioritized education, and you can see how that has affected their entire economy, their entire government, their entire outlook. You look at the likes of Estonia Poland, to a point, you look at Finland, of course, who did that in the nineties, and we saw how it became the most happiest country in the world. The. Best education system in the world and even their economy became one of the biggest in the world. You remember Nokia and some of the other successes that have come from tech in Finland, but in Ireland, we just don't value education. Beyond it being a childcare service, I was struck this week when I was reading some articles about Helen McEntee being the Minister for Education. There was one that jumped out at me. I think Mary McCarthy was the was the journalist who spoke about Helen McEntee and why she was glad. Ellen McEntee was potentially potentially why she was glad she would be the Minister of Education because, and this is why, she has two young children who will be starting school and essentially what she will be able to do is sort out the childcare arrangements that she has to, that she's going to have to suffer from the fact that infants finish an hour earlier than their counterparts in first class upwards. This is why. Was the main focus for Helen McEntee, according to this journalist, and if we consider if we keep pushing that our primary education system is no more or little more than a childcare service we're going to get what we wish for. And, I think the fact that we do so well in the various OECD studies is going to, we're going to find that dropping. Because we value it so little and we seem to be pushing it, with it rather than actual pedagogical thing which we actually were pretty doing pretty well at in terms of pedagogy into things like free school books, free lunches, free this and childcare services. We will reap what we sow in my view if that's the case. Anyway, I haven't even started on my love letter and I'm giving out, but maybe I'm wrong that we see education as a minor portfolio because the fact that McEntee is, has been given the role says to me that it's valued, that it is a big deal for the deputy leader of a political party to take on the education portfolio. And I may be being over optimistic, but it might mean that the last almost decade of neglect of education, where effectively, I suppose what you consider. a minor politician getting the role. We look at Norma Foley and we look at Joe McHugh before that. Neither of those, both of those cases. When they were announced, the first thing that most people said was, who? And it's nice to see that we have a politician that people know already and was a senior and still is a senior politician. So maybe something will happen if we think back to the previous two ministers before that, Richard Bruton and Rory Quinn. Both of those. While maybe divisive in some ways, both of those did make an impact during their tenure and didn't just neglect the education system. They actually had some impact, whether we liked it or not. But of the top 10 people, I just want going back to my top 10 people. I was most excited about being the minister for education from Fianna that is. I had hoped it would have been Jennifer Carole McNeil for the simple reason that she was a politician on the rise. So her elevation to health suggests that the leadership agree. And despite a rather shaky term injustice, I still feel that McEntee is someone who is on the rise within Irish politics. And this move to education will possibly be a place where she might be able to relaunch herself. I feel she was I think unfairly treated injustice so maybe moving her to education to rebuild again may give her that opportunity. It makes me hope, perhaps, that the next few years might be interesting, and McEntee, if she is brave, Could potentially be a 21st century Donna O'Malley. Now, that's me possibly being way over optimistic, but we'll see. So this love letter, as I call it, is a list of things I would love to see happening in the primary education sector in Ireland. And I'm going to start. I have this funny kind of thing. I don't know if I've ever told you this on the podcast before. Whenever I meet. People people and when I say people, when I meet principled mainly and they talk to me and they say, listen, I listen to your podcasts. I read your blogs and things like that. And you know what? I agree. And they always say this. I agree with about 80 percent of what you talk about. They always say that. And it's always 80%. It's funny. I always wish they'd get to 90 or 95%, but it's always 80%. And when I get the, when I talk to them, I say, do you don't mind me asking, the way you said, 80%. You agree with 80 percent of what I say. What's the 20 percent that you disagree with? And that is my first love essentially. And they don't agree with me on this, but it's my love letter. So I'm going to say it. And it's what I feel absolutely passionate about. I would love the minister to tackle. The whole idea of patronage. And I don't think it's going to come as any surprise to anyone that would be my first love. The patronage system, to me, is long past its sell by date. And I don't think even people who 80 percent disagree with me, or agree with me, disagree with that. And I'm beginning, to explore a little more deeply how it affects almost every aspect of the Irish primary education system. And in some ways, I think the reason it hasn't been looked at is because it's generally always sold along religious lines and that causes You know, rather than that causing logical reactions to things, when I talk about the patronage system, everyone should, and rightly so it jumps to, religious control of schools and I'm I've been exploring a little bit about why this tact of mine hasn't been working, and I mentioned it briefly in my previous episode where I talked about the defensiveness people feel when I talk about Catholic schools not being inclusive. And I wrote an article which you'll see in the show notes, it's called Why I Understand Why Catholic Schools Call Themselves Inclusive Even Though They're Not. And I talked about like why I can absolutely understand the defensiveness of Catholic principles of Catholic schools, getting defensive when I say that Catholic schools can't be inclusive when they really believe they are. And, I really wanted to think deeply of trying to get into their mindset. And I suppose I looked at myself and where the times that I get defensive, even when I know. The person who's saying things is right, so I talked a little bit about the situation in Gaza and, even when people are being critical rightly of the Israeli government, some part of deep inside of me because I was raised in a Jewish family, gets this like defensiveness because there's this feeling, Oh, maybe these people are being anti Semitic, even though I know they're not, or in fact, I suspect And even there, you can hear that the slight defensiveness in me. So I can see how Catholic principals in Catholic schools who went to Catholic schools themselves and are sending their kids to Catholic schools and who go through the motions of all the Catholic sacraments and everything else would get defensive if when I'm criticizing a world that they just know. And they're used to, and they're not used to people looking at it in a critical way. I also have, I go on about a friend of mine, an American. A friend of mine who also feels that way when people are giving out about American people being so stupid as to elect Trump. And despite the fact that she herself is very liberal, wouldn't have voted for Trump, this idea that, you know when Irish people or people are calling Americans stupid, she gets this sort of feeling of defensiveness. That she can totally understand as well and it's a I don't know if it's an interesting article, but it's there in the show notes which kind of describe why why I can understand. So, long story short. What I think I feel, what I feel I need to do is rather than tackling patronage myself from a religious point of view despite, I'm not saying I'm going to stop doing that. What I do need to find out is how does patronage take religion out of patronage? How is it affecting the way we run schools? I've been looking at that a little bit, and I was really interested, how it goes way beyond religion. For example, it was really interesting to me how Stormy Owen gave the ability for the state to insist schools close for the day, but the same couldn't happen. for the snow a couple of weeks before that. And in neither case were the Department of Education allowed to tell schools to close. For the storm, a red weather warning. It was the National Emergency Coordination Group that made the decision. And for the snow, because it was an orange warning, the same group didn't have the authority to close schools, but neither did the, did. The Department of Education. And as usual, it came down the line to individual schools because, as the Department of Education always say when there's something difficult to do, It is a matter for all individual schools. The new minister Helen McEntee, needs to address how the patronage system affects everything from legal religious discrimination to more efficient coordination on policies and procedures. For example, On the latter, every school is going to have to produce its own anti bullying policies for this new B conalta framework, despite the fact that they're pretty much all going to be the same. The Department of Education have no power to produce the policy for all schools, and all of them have to adapt it. Similarly, A few years ago, the NCSE were given new powers by the Department of Education to force schools to open special classes. And in order for that to happen, the Department of Education couldn't demand directly that schools would change their policies to an, to allow the NCSE to open to, for, to force schools, to open classes. They actually had to go to the patron bodies to ask for them to ask. individual schools to change their policies to allow themselves to be forced to open special classes. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but the department actually didn't make the demand. They made the demand to patron bodies to make the demand to their individual schools. And if the patron refused, I'm not really sure what the department could have done. Particularly if it was Catholic schools, because they control 90 percent of schools. So in some ways, and I think this is interesting. With that in mind, and this is where I think there is a significantly potential problem should the government wish to push through policies to primary schools in Ireland. Should the Catholic Church be against any policy or any circular or any idea that the department wants to push through, the Catholic Church probably holds the power if they choose to do so. Because. If they refuse to allow 90 percent of schools in the country to do something, it's not really going to happen, is it? Realistically, no other patron has that power. If, for example, the Educate Together network decided, I'm not going to, we're not going to do this particular policy, whatever it might be, it doesn't have to be, it's nothing to do with religion, the Department of Education will go, OK, fine, we won't give you any funding. However, if the Catholic Church decides to do it, I don't think the Department of Education are going to stand up and say we're not going to fund your schools, we're not going to build any schools for you, because it's 90 percent of schools. There would be outrage. All the Department of Education can do is withhold funding. That's what I think they, that's all they can do from the patronage. And while I think they'd have no issue doing that to a smaller patron. I don't think they try it with the Catholic ones. It's actually interesting that the only time I've ever heard the Department of Education withdrawing funding in recent history was actually for a Muslim school. And again, I've linked, made a link in the show notes to an article where Bat O'Keefe withdrew grants from the board of an Islamic school. And I've never heard of it happening. In any other school in the country. I would love the new minister to get a group together to look at the structure of patronage and come up with a long term plan to changing it. So outside of her remit, because if she doesn't last longer than the five years, I don't, I think this is a longer term thing. But I do think a new group has to come together. I think it's basically a new patronage for forum of patronage and pluralism, because obviously, as we know, that. didn't work. We need a new patronage forum, and maybe we need to get rid of the whole pluralism idea, but that's for another story. In fact, I could write a full book on this but I will move on. I would love the new minister. to sort out special education once and for all. Now, if the new minister thinks opening up as many special classes in special schools is all it's going to take to sort out special education, she is going to fail spectacularly at rebuilding her brand. The neglect of special education was ongoing since the recession, and it needs to be addressed quickly. And as soon as possible. Any system that was brought in from 2011 to 2016 needs to be examined, such as the 20 percent cut to resource hours, which was never reversed and remains in place through the set allocation model. The minister will also have to look at decisions made since 2017, which were no better, especially the set allocation model. and front loading models. While there were some green shoots with the front loading model, the set allocation model remains a complete mess, based on junk data and over 90 percent of schools not receiving enough resources for the children in their care. And on top of all of this, schools need proper therapeutic wraparound services. For me, This is what successful countries do, and this is what makes them stand out. And I'm sorry to go on about Finland again, but I went over there. And I have to say, and I've written an article about this. When I went to Finland, there was nothing amazing about their teaching. In fact, I felt we were superior in our teaching methodologies. But what they had, every school had a psychologist, a social worker, and a nurse on site. And in Ireland, we need something similar. We also possibly need, because we're in such, there's a Yiddish word, we're in stach. It means we're absolutely at nothing, we are in terrible bother. We need speech and language therapists. Occupational therapists, I think that would top the list of needs right now. I suppose behavioral therapists maybe as well. I don't know. But certainly a psychologist, social worker, nurse, and therapist would be very valuable. I have argued that special education will be the scandal of the 21st century. And if the new minister can stop that from happening, she would be well in line for the same accolades, I think, as Dhana O'Malley would have received. So let's move on. I would love to see new and better leadership supports. Now, if there's one thing that the Irish Primary Principals Network, that's the IPPN, has done in the last few years, it was to highlight that primary school principals suffer double the amount of stress and mental health issues of the national average. It is quite mad that the department have yet to do anything concrete to help despite the promises in the Programme for Government this time. While the IPPN. are rolling out a rather strange series of seminars on making the job doable. This is the title of their seminars. I am going to go to one of them to to see what it's all about. Given that they argue it isn't sustainable, the departments have yet to make any assurances of anything they're going to do. The focus now needs to be on reducing workload. Ever since I got involved with the IPPN and also with the National Principals Forum, every single survey that I was involved in more or less indicated that workload was the biggest priority for principals. I would also suggest that the new minister needs to stop drip feeding the positions of responsibility back. She simply needs to restore them all in one Go. The INTO should really be hanging their heads into shame. For many reasons, but on this one in particular, they had a directive that we would not cooperate with SSE until the posts of responsibility were back. And the minute that they were drip fed they completely lifted that that directive and they should never have lifted the directive until all positions were back in place. And the stress that has been caused by this drip feeding is not fair on INTO. But on both the schools involved and but also the teachers who year after year have to come back to an interview and it must be just depressing for certain teachers who over the last I suppose they've been drip feeding for I don't know what seven or eight years and that means a lot of schools will be obviously advertising a new post every year and every year they go to the interview with the best will in the world and every year they get disappointed. It just must be. Oh, it must be depressing and it's awful and it shouldn't be happening. Basically, restore all the rest of them in one go and be done with it because and at least that way we can actually start planning properly again because again, we can't plan either without knowing whether the posts are coming back or not. Anyway, enough ranting on that one. Let's go to the next one. I would love for us to go back to focusing on teaching and learning. When I've been asked the biggest difference that I've noticed in primary education, I give the example of when I was last in the classroom. Back then, I probably, I would say, made two phone calls to parents a year. Yes, a year. These days, teachers probably make two phone calls a day. Teachers are spending so much of their day tackling non teaching issues, whether that's unnecessary paperwork, dealing with increased behaviours, and replying to constant streams of emails. I'm leaving a lot out in that list. That's just three examples. So much is expected of teachers. And very little of it has anything to do with education. The new curriculum has been a massive disappointment to me. What could have easily been a revolution of 21st century learning is merely a small tweak to the 1999 curriculum, even with the new subjects. So much more could have been achieved and it simply wasn't. The Department of Education has spent the last five years turning primary education into a child care service. That's not taking anything away from child care of course, it's just not what primary education is supposed to be. Initiative after initiative has been focused on benefiting parents rather And when I say benefiting parents, I mean their pockets, as in their money. Whether it's free school books, free school meals, free school transport, everything seems to be focused on parents, financial situations, rather than children's brains. Teachers are rarely mentioned by the Minister for Education when she was making announcements and this is also something that needs to change. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but Teaching is central to good outcomes for education. When we are preventing teachers from teaching, we are in big trouble, and we will see this, or if we aren't going to already. I would love for our new minister to ensure that teaching becomes central to the role of the teacher. Anything that is important, but unrelated to teaching, needs to be given to someone. else which leads me to my next love. I would love a new position called the teaching assistant to arrive in Ireland. Yes, I would love the Minister for Education to announce a new post, the Teaching Assistant. It's probably links to my previous point, as I said, but it is madness to believe that for 21st century learning to happen that can be done in a classroom by one person. There are so many conflicting needs going on in every primary school classroom in the country that one person simply can't manage them all. For example, when a disagreement takes place on Yard, the This now takes huge time away from teaching and learning. For example, if some children are really struggling with a concept, a teaching assistant could help work with other children in the classroom. For example, if a phone call needs to be made to book an appointment with a parent, you get the point. The new minister for education needs to look into the idea of teaching assistants urgently. I would love. the new minister to tackle the lack of diversity in teaching. As I often quote, 99. 7 percent of primary school teachers in Ireland are white. and Irish, and this compares very poorly with almost every other job in the country. And I think the Dáil may be the only workplace that is less diverse. I am still the only mainstream primary school principal in Ireland from an ethnic minority, and I often joke that I'm not even a good example because everyone that sees me assumes that I'm not. Visually, I am also white. And Irish. And to me, this is crazy. However, I don't believe it isn't by design. The entire structure of our Irish primary education system makes it really difficult for diversity to happen. Yes, we have a few teachers coming through the system now, but it's nowhere near enough. These teachers are still the only ones in their year groups rather than being representative of society. Those who speak to the media admit they are unlikely to find employment easily due to the obstacles in place in Ireland. And on top of this, for whatever reason, people cannot see past diversity equaling migrants, and that it will take time for them to progress into the system. And it's nonsense. We're already well into two generations of native Irish people who come from diverse backgrounds. I would love the new minister to start talking. Taking the lack of diversity in our system seriously, of all the issues I've mentioned, to me this is the easiest one to tackle. It's a shocking failure of everyone involved in the education system that we are still in a situation, especially our trade union movement, the INTO, who should be leading on this, who should be leading on it so strongly so the minister can take this on. And I think if a minister does take this on, they will reap the rewards of it. I'm shocked, to be honest, about the INTO and how poorly they are doing this. And maybe I'll do an episode completely based on diversity within the education system. I think it's definitely worth, looking at the pitfalls and I do feel I'm justified in really pointing most of my ire on the INTO. My understanding of unions is equality. Is number one about when it comes to everything that equality has to be number one, and I do not sense any appetite for pushing against this issue, and I know it's very difficult, and I know it's really hard. To put yourself out there when the majority of people disagree with you. But that's the job of a union, in my view. Anyway, I'm moving on to the union rather than the minister for education. And look, I feel I've gone over gone quite far in time wise, and I won't keep going and annoying you with. Other issues, but obviously there are many other areas that the new Minister for Education needs to consider. Funding is a huge one, of course, and I think we'll be talking about that again. Climate change and biodiversity, I think these are areas that are really important for this generation of children. They need to prepare themselves for a world and we've seen that, as I've said, about the storms and the snow, and are these going to be very common things? We need to obviously get the Ministry to focus on technology. That's still very much an interesting area where it's becoming a curriculum subject, but there's no guaranteed funding every year for it, and much, much more. But I hope this gives a flavour of what I'd love to see to change, and I would love to hear what you think. So that's it from me for this week. I hope you enjoyed my love letter to the Minister for Education of all the things I would love to see happening. And if you've enjoyed this, as I said, please subscribe to my newsletter on shop dot net slash subscribe. And I would love to hear from you. And any. If there is anything else you'd like me to discuss on this podcast, I'd love to get suggestions. If you are passionate about something, you'd like me to interview you. I love having an interview with people. So please get in touch as well. Other than that, you can find me on all the social platforms. I'm enjoying myself a little more on Instagram these days. Also LinkedIn as exp continues to fall out of favor with all of us. Thank you very much for listening. We'll catch you again soon. All the very best. Bye bye.

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