Principal of prestigious Dublin fee-paying girls' school Alexandra College, Marian Healy's profile was raised earlier this year when she dealt effectively with the misuse of the Bebo website. She tells Louise Holden that it's time for parents to set firmer boundaries.

Alexandra College principal Marian Healy took the spotlight last January when she braved the airwaves on the subject of cyber-bullying within her prestigious Dublin school for girls.

Healy's forthright and compassionate approach set the tone of the debate about an issue which is both new and old in Irish schooling. Bullying has been around forever: only the medium has changed.

Healy's openness was praised by Minister for Education and Science Mary Hanafin, and the anti-bullying policy established at Alexandra College in the wake of the incident is now being used by the department as a template for other schools.

Healy, now in her fifth year as principal, is eager to move on from the events of last year and into other policy areas such as pastoral care and discipline, in order to meet the peculiarities of the teenage years head on. Enticing parents into the process is the first challenge, she says.

"Drawing parents into the process of education is the modern challenge of schooling. The adolescent years carry their own problems, from eating disorders to bullying, and the best way to safeguard students is for schools and parents to work together. This is especially true when there are problems at home, but these parents are the most difficult to get on side."

The pastoral care area has become a bit of a minefield as exposure to harm comes from a wider diversity of sources - the internet, e-mail and mobile phones. Websites such as Bebo.com and Hateboard.com make it easier for misbehaving students to get under the radar. Schools cannot police all these areas without the involvement of parents. A hands-off approach to parenting is no longer an option in the Ireland of 2006, Healy insists.

"The problems that used to trouble sixth years are now the problems of first and second years. Many parents now are trying to raise their children to be independent, when in fact they need boundaries more than ever."

She cites the 18th birthday party phenomenon as an example of how some students may be over-indulged. "This is a Celtic Tiger economy symptom. The 18th birthday party has become a big deal, involving a lot of preparation and expense. It's a distracting event in sixth year and can be divisive if not everyone in the year in invited."

The temptation to grant teenagers more freedom than they can handle may be a side-effect of the booming economy, she muses. "People are working harder outside the home, and I worry about the time that is left for investment in children. Many children are in creches from 7am to 7pm, but how much confidence do we have in the people who are essentially rearing them?

"Issues of challenging behaviour often arise where parents have not actually reared their own children. You have to keep them close. It's not always convenient to have a gang of kids around the table for dinner each evening, but that's what you have to do. I tell parents to adopt an open-house policy when it comes to friends, too."

Big changes are afoot for the 620 day and boarding students at Alexandra College. The school council has invested considerable funding in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at the school and it is hoped that a pilot group of students will be working with laptops in the classroom this year. The development comes on foot of a research visit to Maine in the US and the Isle of Man, where Healy and members of the council investigated leading-edge practice in ICT learning in schools.

"I've been a teacher for 27 years," says Healy, a former Irish teacher from Mount Anville Secondary School, Dublin. "I believe that what I saw in action in Maine can engage every student in the classroom, regardless of her level of ability. Bringing Mackintosh iBooks or their equivalent into the classroom is like introducing another book. It is an interactive resource that students can navigate at their own pace in school, but particularly at home with both homework, revision and private study."

Healy does not believe that cutting-edge learning should be the preserve of private schools, however, and insists that the Government should be investing as much, if not more, in ICT at primary and secondary level as it is currently investing at third and fourth level.

"If the Government wants to increase innovation at third at fourth level they need to start in the schools. That's when we'll start to see a real return on investment."

Healy insists that technology will play a large part in the reform of the Leaving Cert. "It's a fair and transparent exam, but continuous assessment is the best route to take from here. For my entire teaching life the introduction of meaningful continuous assessment has been hampered by the teaching unions. I think that targeted technology use could bypass a lot of the administrative concerns that teachers have when it comes to continuous assessment."

She is openly relieved at the demise of the points race. "I think that this year's Leaving Cert students will be the last to experience the level of pressure that we have become accustomed to in the last 20 years. The death of the points race will have a huge impact on grind schools."

Healy is looking forward to the end of the grind school culture, which she does not believe does any service to students. Like most schools, Alexandra College has lost students to private tuition colleges over the years. "I think what they are losing in terms of the hidden curriculum of a school like this is greater than what they will gain in a grind school," she says.

Healy lives on the grounds of Alexandra College along with the school's full-time boarding students. She worries about everything from anorexia to windows left open at night, but the occasional sleepless night is part of the job of caring for more than 600 teenage girls.