‘I think Irish schools need to keep doing what they’re doing’: Irish teachers’ views on school autonomy after working in English academies

Abstract

Despite a lack of conclusive evidence connecting autonomous schools and academic success, school autonomy is regularly championed as being a way of not only improving schools but as a way of improving the quality of education in socially and economically deprived areas. This research builds on a recent paper published in Irish Educational Studies that argues that school autonomy should not be advanced in Ireland by exploring how teachers feel about features of autonomous schools. Irish teachers who have previously worked in academy schools in England, and who now teach in disadvantaged schools in Ireland, were interviewed about their experiences and how they would feel about features of autonomous schools being implemented in Ireland. The experiences the participants had in England indicate how school autonomy can be experienced in different ways – morally proper ways that engage with the broad purposes of schooling such as focusing on students and their learning, and morally improper ways that prioritise looking good on external measures at the expense of students and their learning. Overall, the participants were opposed to schools in Ireland becoming more like English academies but felt that having greater local flexibility over the curriculum in schools and offering a wider range of subjects would be beneficial, provided that it was embraced and enacted in a morally proper manner.

Exploring parent and student engagement in school self-evaluation in four European countries

“…Formal parental involvement remains limited in Ireland with few playing an active role either on the board of management or in the parents’ association (Gilleece and Eivers, 2018) and while it would appear that although the opportunity for students to get involved in decision-making processes in Irish schools is well below the international average despite students in Ireland valuing participation (Cosgrove and Gilleece, 2012), there have been suggestions that it might well be the case that Irish parents would not want to engage with schools on a more formal level, even if opportunities were provided (Skerritt, 2019a). It would appear that the ‘legacy of leaving education to others, originally to the Church, but now to school management and teachers, persists to a great degree’ (Fleming, 2016: 377), shaping how many teachers and parents feel about the formal involvement of parents today (Skerritt, 2019b). Nonetheless, student and parent voice, through the use of questionnaires and focus group interviews, now form a component of Ireland’s school inspection policy and, according to the chief inspector of education in Ireland, the time has finally come to make much greater use of this resource which has remained peripheral to date (Hislop, 2017).…”

Raziskovanje v vzgoji in izobraževanju: učenje in poučevanje na daljavo – izkušnje, problemi, perspektive

“…V prvem delu se osredinjamo na glavne ugotovitve, izhajajoč iz dobrih praks Irske in Portugalske na področju zagotavljanja socialne vključenosti v izobraževanju. V drugem delu navajamo predloge za zagotavljanje (še) večje socialne vključenosti v slovenskem izo-braževalnem prostoru, ki sledijo iz glavnih ugotovitev in znanstvenih razprav ( (Sanches in Dias, 2013;Silva et al, 2017;Skerritt, 2019).…”

The DEIS programme as a policy aimed at combating educational disadvantage: fit for purpose?

“…(Principal,3) The source of most of these additional requirements is the DES which, at the same time, has cut back on the resources made available to schools. Much of this extra workload originates with the inspectorate who operate according to 'a positivist agenda set at national level', which fails to take account of the particularities of each school context (MacRuairc and Harford 2008) and, in that regard, DEIS schools experience greater demands than others (McNamara and O'Hara 2012;Skerritt 2019).…”