An insider's guide to education

** That poll in The Irish Timesshowing a huge drop in support for Catholic patronage in schools is concentrating minds in the Department of Education.

The Catholic church no longer commands anything like the support it has claimed for school patronage. Some 61 per cent of those polled want radical change. The Department has been well behind public opinion on this issue.

Indeed, the catalyst for change came three years ago when the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin suggested that the church was over-represented in education. He was the first to raise the issue of the church divesting itself of control. What has happened since?

Department officials and representatives of the bishops and CORI have been seeking to identify areas where schools could be divested. But don’t expect any developments for some time as there are complex issues to be teased out. And local plebiscites of school communities to be organised. It could be 2012 at the earliest before any schools are handed over.

** Fine Gael’s Brian Hayes has been an energetic and well informed education spokesman. But he is not flavour of the monthwith the university sector after that non-controversy over the president’s house at UL and the dispute over the student registration charge at last week’s Oireachtas committee.

** Interesting to see that the president of Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT) has entered blogsphere. Prof Ciarán Ó Catháin’s blog can be found at http://aitpresident.blogspot.com. Not surprisingly, one of his first blogs was a response to those memorable remarks from Peter Sutherland, in which the former European commissioner queried the even distribution of resources between top universities and a “Ballygobackwards RTC”.

Ó Catháin’s refutes the suggestion that there is anything backwards about institutes of technology. AIT, incidentally, also has official pages on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

** For its part, the Department of Education might do well to boost its online activity. ASTI’s journal Astir reports how the Department’s payroll division receives an average of 14,500 telephone queries per week.

The lines are so busy that the Department has been forced to restrict access on Tuesday mornings. What a bizarre waste of time. All teachers have set pay, increments and allowances.

Is it not possible to build a website with a drop down menu for various increments and allowances? This would allow teachers to check their take home pay at a glance.

** What have Peter Sutherland, Don Thornhill and the former Intel chief

Craig Barret got in common? They are among a small minority of public figures who have the courage to question the quality of our education system. The American Chamber of Commerce and other business groups are also sounding the alarm.

All around the education system, teachers, lecturers and academics talk constantly about the dumbing down of academic standards.

Teachers will tell you how foreign students are now regularly the top achievers in their schools. Academics will tell you how students, even those with impressive Leaving Cert points, struggle in the first year of college. But very few speak out forcefully. It would be good to see the main Opposition parties focus – not just on resource issues – but also on these questions of quality. And where are the education departments of our major colleges?

They should be to the fore in stimulating a much needed public debate.

E-mail us, in confidence, at teacherspet@irishtimes.com