Unlike in America, here both parents work

After four years in Texas and nine years in North Carolina, Irish emigrant Brenda Malley moved back to Ireland in October 1998, temporarily, with her American husband Michael and their three children Matthew, Kate and Claire.

That temporary move became permanent and resulted in a total change of schooling system for their three children.

In North Carolina the children went through the public school system, which helped connect them to the community. "The one thing we noticed is over there parents are invited to have far greater involvement. Maybe parents aren't working to the same extent - both parents working - over there as they are here." In the US, "there seems to be more free time available for people, especially in the younger classes in primary school, to step in, come into the classrooms and assist," says Brenda. Parents were invited to come in and assist with computers or reading to children. The classrooms were custom-built - large and modern - where a group of 25 to 30 children could rotate on centres of activity. "It was much more free-flowing, and probably engaging for the children. They were organised into groups of four to six and set to work on a project." Here, she found, they were instead sitting in rows, in their desks, opening a book to a certain page and learning facts. "It's more old-fashioned or maybe the more formal structure of Irish or European education.

"In America it seems to be more creative - or maybe they have the facilities, space and personnel to handle it."

Despite the good side of the primary school system, Brenda admits her own and Michael's fears would have risen later on as the kids got into their teen years and entered middle school and high school. "The peer culture is a little more sinister, with things like the gun culture, over there.

"The fear that someone - and it isn't the poor kids in the ghetto, these are the privileged kids who feel alienated but have a chip on their shoulder - would come in and shoot all around them was becoming very real.

"It was happening in the kinds of schools that our kids would have attended. We feel a greater safety and a normal way of life in some ways here."

One noticeable change was that Brenda and Michael's children attended mixed schools in the US and were faced with an abundance of single-sex schools in Dublin. The first primary school they went to in Ireland was mixed, but a move to Clontarf meant the girls had to go to all-female Belgrove senior girls' school. Matthew, however, has moved on to secondary school - one that's not only mixed, but also has a mix of different nationalities. He attends Sutton Park, where, says Brenda, approximately a quarter of students enrolled are foreigners. "It is more like an American high school because it is mixed. The uniform is jeans and a uniform sweatshirt. It is nondenominational so it is more like what he would have experienced had we stayed in America."

The culture of wearing school uniforms was hard for her children to adjust to, Breda says. And it's just part of the difference.

"It is more regimented here. You get into your uniform, you sit in your desk, you do your work. But for all that they have found lovely friends and have seemed to leave behind what was American and settle into what was Irish rapidly enough."

Settling into what is Irish, of course, also involves adopting the Irish language. The exemption cut-off is 11 so Kate and Claire, who are now 11 and eight years old, have been studying Irish. Because Claire started when she was in senior infants, it has been easier for her, but much more difficult for Kate. Matthew, Kate and Claire's American accents haven't proved an obstacle to their integration into school here. "They are seen as a little bit exotic," says Brenda. "America is cool to Irish kids."