The investment in education report 1965 – recollections and reminiscences

Digital learning experiences and spaces: Learning from the past to design better pedagogical and curricular futures

“…Learners were not only at the mercy of the policy and curriculum guidelines but also at the mercy of teachers' capacities and abilities to deliver the content in a beneficial manner to the learners. The Catholic Church played a dominant role in Irish education irrespective of international educational trends or individuals' religious preferences (Hyland, 2014) furthering the divide and shortcomings in the education sector which focused on traditions instead of modernisation and equality of education.…”

“…Several reports in the 1960s including the Investment in Education Report (1966), and the Commission on Higher Education Report (1967) identified the important implications of equal educational LE. These reports shed insights into the major reform required to move forward while acknowledging some major existing flaws, as Hyland (2014, p. 12) explains “only 50% of the schools had electric power plugs, and this was at a time when the department was discussing the provision of (electrically powered) audio‐visual aids in schools”, the first time technology has come into play in educational LE. Acknowledging this educational disadvantage was significant and there were calls for structural change and educational expansion (O'Callaghan, 2011), paving the way for more ambitious and strategic policy approaches to further close the inequality gap and move away from the ancient model of education.…”

“…From the late 1970s, the DES was under immense pressure from the computer enthusiastic teachers, society and computer industry to introduce a computer‐based subject at PP level (Murphy, 1980). The added pressure on the DES was the increasing population of the Republic from 2,978,248 in 1971 to 3,364,881 in 1979 (Hyland, 2014) and constant need for better resources in schools. The 1970s was a decade of substantial educational change and an emphasis was placed on the usefulness and necessity of technology in education.…”

Intergenerational Equality and Higher Education: Towards an Age-Friendly Higher Education?

“…As a research based policy intervention Investment in Education, directly and indirectly, resulted in a significant expansion of secondary and higher education in Ireland throughout the 1960s and succeeding decades to a point where participation levels in higher education in Ireland grew to exceed the average for OECD countries (Department of Education and Skills [DES] 2011, Irish Educational Studies 2014). Some fifty years later, while major socioeconomic inequalities remain, the educational patterns in Ireland are totally transformed: over 95% of young people complete senior secondary school, of whom approximately 65% progress to some form of higher education (Hyland 2011). The population of Ireland also changed dramatically over the half-century: growing from 2.82 million in the mid-1960s to 4.58 million in 2011 (Central Statistics Office [CSO] 2012).…”