A must-read for all school principals

As the demands of Irish parents with regard to the education of their children become more diverse and complex, they are turning more and more to the courts to solve their disputes with the Department of Education.

Parents of children with disabilities, parents who want to educate their children at home, parents who do not want their children educated in religious schools, have all trodden the well-worn path to the High, and sometimes Supreme, Court to have their constitutional rights vindicated. As a result there is now a body of law defining what rights parents have with regard to the education of their children, and what duties are imposed on the State.

Education and the Law, by barrister and educationalist Dr Dympna Glendenning, examines all this. But it goes further, situating the present state of the law in the historical development of the education system both before and after independence.

There is a minute examination of how the articles of the 1937 Constitution dealing with education came to be written, pointing to their origins in the Aquinian theory of Natural Law, and emphasising the central role played by Alfred O'Rahilly, Edward Cahill SJ and J C McQuaid CSSp.

This has left a difficult legacy, according to Glendenning. "Because of the many and varied theories of natural law, and the distinctions between the Christian churches, it is difficult to ascertain its precise content, its ambit or its requirements in a given situation."

The Supreme Court therefore has a difficult task, she writes. "Undue constitutional buttressing of family/parental rights may cloak inadequate State support for children whose parents fail them or who lack parents." And she points out that "case law displays a somewhat number of approaches" when applying constitutional rights.

She also considers education in the context of the EU and from a human rights point of view.

This book also deals with more immediate and pressing concerns for parents and teachers, like the teacher's duty of care in the context of negligence and discipline in schools, employment law in relation to teachers, and, bringing it right up to date, the Freedom of Information Act as it applies to school records.

Education and the Law by Dympna Glendenning Butterworths, 607pp, £65