EDUCATION PROFILE:When John Coolahan talks, policymakers listen. He has been a pivotal figure in Irish education for decades. Now, the McCarthy Report has goaded him back into the spotlight, writes LOUISE HOLDEN
JOHN COOLAHAN is education’s everyman. He’s a household name in thousands of Irish homes not because of his public profile, but because he has stood before so many pupils and students. For the past 50 years, Coolahan has been a primary teacher, a secondary teacher, a teacher-trainer and a university professor. He has been a principal mover in every major piece of education legislation produced in the past four decades. There is barely a corner of Irish educational policy that he hasn’t coloured and yet, until recently, Coolahan has not entered public debate on policy issues. He prefers to use his vast network to influence reform behind the scenes. So when he drew the media to his criticism of the McCarthy report last month, it stopped many policymakers in their tracks.
“John is above politics,” says a close colleague. “He has worked on education policy over decades and successive administrations. His encyclopaedic knowledge of education gives him a very long view, so he doesn’t tend to get bogged down in ephemeral disputes. However, he has expressed disappointment with the lack of educational vision shown by the Government since 2000.”
The Irish vision for education has Coolahan written all over it.
Coolahan has been instrumental in drawing up a slew of education legislation, starting in the early 1990s. Prior to this period, the education system in the Republic of Ireland had no modern legal basis. Coolahan was adviser to Labour’s Niamh Bhreathnach in the years leading up to the Education White Paper of 1995. He also served as adviser to Fianna Fáil’s Willie O’Dea in the drafting of the White Paper on Adult Education in 1999. His expertise helped to shape legislation on early childhood education and education welfare.
His influence was crucial in the tricky years when successive ministers of education faced the monstrously unwieldy system of Irish schooling. The power of the church, the VECs and the teaching unions thwarted reform. The OECD report of 1991 acknowledged the difficulty of policymaking for education in Ireland, where intransigent local power blocs resisted change of any kind. Change was urgently needed, however; school enrolments had trebled in two decades and the jobs market had changed completely.
Coolahan, the soft-spoken Kerryman with a CV that five educators could proudly share, was perhaps the only figure who could cross parochial lines in education and find consensus.
“He is a wonderful man to work with,” says a leading educationalist.
“He is our most outstanding national educator. His historian’s ability to take the long view has always left people in its thrall. He readily refers to relevant reports from the early 1900s, his erudition commands real respect.”
Coolahan’s erudition helped to shape a modern vision for Irish education in this period, underpinned by legislation on which all stakeholders were agreed. Imagine his frustration when in 2004 the Department of Education announced a nationwide consultative process on the education system, known as YES (Your Education System).
“Coolahan was dumbstruck at this development,” says a close source.
“After 15 years of painstaking consultation and the publication of a series of White Papers on education that laid out the groundwork for the development of the system, the Department chose to ignore all that work and go around the country conducting a campaign of information. John regarded that as a waste of time and an act of political immaturity.”
Nevertheless, Coolahan remained silent, and continued his background policy work, which by now extended across Eastern Europe and beyond.
The recommendations of McCarthy on education, however, have goaded him into the spotlight.
“Coolahan fought hard for the decentralisation of education in Ireland,” says an academic. “Because the system here was made up of so many conflicting interests, everyone wanted to report directly to the government. This made it very difficult for the Department of Education to shape policy – they were too busy micromanaging the system.”
Coolahan fought hard for the introduction of regional education boards that would take on the day-to-day running of schooling, but his efforts were blocked by the churches and the VECs. The compromise, enshrined by the Education Act and successive pieces of legislation, was the establishment of agencies such as National Education Welfare Board and the National Education Psychology Service.
The McCarthy Report recommends the reabsorption of many external educational agencies into the Department.
Despite his chagrin at what he sees as a “crazy and short-sighted” proposal, Coolahan is still an objective figure, moving in the stratosphere of education. He is about to leave for Brazil, where he will conduct an extensive review of the country’s school system in order to help the government develop policy. As a consultant for the World Bank and vice president of the EU’s education committee, he has been invited to many jurisdictions on the same mission; Chile, South Africa, Kurdistan, Turkey and Costa Rica are just a few.
“The mission in which he takes the most pride is a very quiet one, close to home,” says a source. “It’s not well known, but the Standing Conference for Teacher Education North and South is regarded as one of the most successful north/south initiatives ever established, thanks to the high level of co-operation and dialogue it has engendered.”
In between Kurdistan and Brazil, Coolahan has managed to publish A History Of Ireland's School Inspectorate 1831-2008with Patrick F O'Donovan. Launching the work, which takes a characteristically long view of Irish education, Minister Batt O'Keefe acknowledged the debt that Irish education owes him. O'Keefe was unaware that Coolahan was about to use the same platform to warn the Government against actions that would undo the decades of progress he helped to steer.
“John is not confrontational, he is a gentleman and wears his scholarship lightly,” says a friend. “He never makes you feel like he knows more than you, but he knows more than anyone about Irish education. He’s almost 70, but his workrate has not slowed down a jot. He will be a leading force in Irish and international education policy for years to come.”
Coolahan’s usual media shyness has returned for now, as he gets back to the work of building Brazilian education policy. Shy he may be, but not retiring.
Crossing theclass divide: the CV of an exceptional educator
The following are just a few of the roles John Coolahan has taken on since committing himself to a life in teaching as a boy in Turbot, Co Kerry in the 1950s.
– Primary school teacher
– Post-primary school teacher in the vocational sector and in further education
– Lecturer (primary) Carysfort College
– Lecturer (post-primary)
– Prof of Education at NUI Maynooth
– Advisor to the Department of Education on 1991 Green Paper
– Secretary General of the National Education Convention, 1993
– Secretary General of the National Forum on Early Childhood Education, 1998
– Advisor on the Green Paper on Adult Education 1998
– Member of the Senate of the National University of Ireland, 1997 to present
– Chairman of the academic committee of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe
– Leader of the OECD teams on country reviews of education
– Member of the Governing Body of NUI Maynooth and the Mater Dei Institute
– Chairman of St Patrick's College
– North and South consultant for the World Bank
– Vice President for the EU Education Committee
