The Convention on Education meets again this weekend. It describes itself as “a once in a generation opportunity for children, young people, parents, educators and wider society to help shape Ireland’s education system for decades to come”.
It has met twice already, in March and in May, and is currently scheduled to have two more meetings – next weekend and in November.
Given its potential significance for the future of education, the convention has attracted remarkably little public debate or media coverage.
Alongside the convention, the journal Studies is publishing a special issue, Shaping the Future of Irish Education: A Contribution to the Conversation, brought together by Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, former president of the University of Galway and former dean of business at UCD. “While several of the papers reference the convention,” says Ó hOgartaigh, “we’ve been careful that the special issue is not a critique of it. The convention has its job to do. As the title suggests, this is a contribution to the conversation.”
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The special issue includes contributions from academics, teachers, students and parents. “We wanted a variety of voices,” says Ó hÓgartaigh. “We didn’t include members of the convention. They may have been reluctant to contribute in the middle of their deliberations. But it’s not about the convention and, more importantly, they have their voice.”
As Dermot Roantree, the editor of Studies, outlines in his introduction, “with this special issue of Studies, we are continuing the journal’s practice of contributing to the national conversation on education at critical junctures”. Studies’ reflections on education since its foundation in 1912 map the preoccupations of the times.
Much has changed since.
Following an essay on the origins of the current convention by Martin Hawkes, the National Education Convention of 1993 is discussed by John Walshe. Held during a turbulent time in Irish politics, that convention sowed the seeds for a White Paper which “led to two landmark pieces of legislation which were enacted over the following years: the Universities Act which was passed by Niamh Bhreathnach in 1997, and the Education Act which was passed by her successor and current Taoiseach Micheál Martin in 1998. They were followed by a succession of other bills covering inter alia the Teaching Council, education welfare, qualifications, special needs.”
Much has changed since then too.
The themes running through the special issue reflect those changes in education and in Irish society. One of the changes is about the purpose of education itself. While the convention in the agenda approved by the Government is “asked to consider” ... “the values and aspirations” that should underpin a vision for the future of education, the special issue steps further back – and deeper – and addresses the value of education in the first place.
John Walshe discusses the aftermath of the 1993 convention where Séamus Brennan, the minister for education in 1992-93, argued that “he believed that the education system traditionally prepared people for employment, but not to create employment”.
This, says Ó hÓgartaigh, “misses the point entirely”.
This is reflected in the beginning of Joe Dunne’s essay based on his recent book, Back to the Rough Ground: Practical Judgement and the Lure of Technique: “Two questions arise at the heart of education: what is a good or flourishing life for a human being? And how can educators, and the institutions and policies that frame their practices, set young people on pathways to such flourishing?.”
This is also echoed in Finbarr Bradley’s description of his question for students about a “good life” rather than a good living and in Katriona O’Sullivan’s powerful personal piece where she comments that “the greatest thing education ever gave me wasn’t a career. It wasn’t a title or a salary. It was the ability to stop, to think, and to ask, ‘is this actually true’?”
Pat Dolan argues for “a new lens of education that advances student wellbeing and focuses more on human flourishing”, stating that “with less focus on pure academic achievement, a new horizon for education can emerge to the benefit of all”. Bernie O’Connell writes of being present for students, Genevieve Wyeth of the possibilities of community.
As might be expected of Studies, there is a social justice dimension to the debate throughout. Articles by Kathleen Lynch, David Leahy and Katriona O’Sullivan reflect this. The change in emphasis from the current focus on access to the necessary one of inclusion is summed up by Leahy: “Access concerns entry into education; inclusion means belonging within it.”
This is a “substantive change”, says Ó hÓgartaigh. “No more than society, atomised as it is, students are looking for a sense of belonging.”
It is also reflected in the convention’s agenda of “supporting children and young people of different abilities”, although Ó hÓgartaigh argues that “there should be a stronger verb than ‘support’ ... ‘helping them flourish’ is the need”.
Students’ agency, their engagement and participation in their own learning, is therefore now a tenet of education internationally, not only in Ireland. “Although I would have liked to include more students, and we consciously sought contributions from them, we have several student leaders with important things to say. Sai Gujulla, who was the Students’ Union president in Galway when I was there, Jacob Roantree, a secondary school student, and Pádraig Mac Brádaigh of Aontas na Mac Léinn in Éirinn, all give a student point of view. The convention has student voices too, to which we must listen if we are to learn.”
These student views also reflect a multicultural agenda and a multicultural Ireland. This is one significant change since 1993, says Ó hÓgartaigh. “According to the CSO, about 6 per cent of the population were ‘non-Irish’ compared to nearly 17 per cent now” (although, he says, “we should avoid describing people as non-anything”). “This is a profound change, offering challenges in the classroom for sure, but also huge opportunities for understanding, for learning respect, and openness and empathy in a multicultural context which is reflected in Paul Gillespie’s thoughtful paper in the special issue.”
[ Weaknesses in policymaking: A challenge to the Convention on EducationOpens in new window ]
The increased awareness and impact of global warming is another change in context since the 1993 Convention. This also is a theme of the special issue, including in the papers by Anne Dolan, Kathleen Lynch and Joanne Parkes. Anne Dolan returns to the question “What is education for? … the environmental crisis is not a technological or political failure but a crisis of mind, perception and values. It is therefore, first and foremost an educational challenge”, and sets out a framework for systemic curricular change.
“This is sometimes a question we lose,” says Ó hÓgartaigh. “Teachers, school leaders and parents are under increasing pressure, as mentioned by Bernie O’Connell and Jonathan Tiernan, and sometimes it seems like the curriculum and the school day need to have elastic sides with all the expectations that are added. But if we return to the purpose of education, we all know the difference a teacher can make, it’s personal, it’s about human flourishing in all its guises. We are human beings, not human doings, so we should be and not only do.”
This, he says, is at the heart of the special issue and is encapsulated in an essay by Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Like many papers in it, he argues that with the emergence of artificial intelligence “our focus must shift”. But, most of all, Schleicher argues that education is about hope, its challenges requiring “deep transformations in how and where learning happens”.
Ó hÓgartaigh refers back to John Walshe’s article which outlines the process of change following the 1993 convention by “listening through genuine consultation, thinking through careful policy development based on evidence, and implementing through legislation and sustained political commitment”.
“Systemic change is not easy, we know. But if we are thinking about the next 30 years”, he says, “this needs a reimagining of how Ireland is now and will be then, that radical transformation Andreas calls for. One can only hope there is the courage and the political will to see it through.”
