IPPN

Published: 15 November 2011

This week, IPPN will launch a report, ‘Primary School Governance - Challenges and Opportunities’ - the first comprehensive, evidence-based analysis of how our schools are managed and run since BoMs were set up four decades ago. IPPN conducted research using questionnaires distributed to 500 randomly-selected primary schools. It is timely that we publish the report this month since, as you know, 26,000 new board members take up their voluntary positions from December 1st.

It is in the interest of Principals that Boards of Management undergo radical reform.  Primary school governance must be redesigned to reflect a changing society, new legislation affecting schools, a diverse school-going population, and a school system that is more community-based than parish-focused.

Our BoM structure is outdated and no longer adequately responsive to the educational, legislative, financial, human and other resource responsibilities that have evolved over the past two decades. Primary schools need to be both governed and managed, with governance clearly defined and distinct from day-to-day school management which is the responsibility of the Principal and the In-School Management Team.

Smaller schools should be incentivised to establish shared governance structures, with legal, financial, human resource and building and maintenance expertise made available on a cluster or regional basis to all schools. While the voluntary effort of thousands of people over many years to boards of management has ensured that our network of primary schools has been well supported, we must now face the reality that it is no longer practical that the management of our schools is left entirely to volunteers.

The report argues, too, that the increasingly complex nature of education requires an availability of paid professional services on an ongoing basis to all schools; that board members should have access to professional training relevant to their roles and responsibilities; and that skilled administrative support should be put in place to help Principals to discharge their governance and instructional leadership responsibilities.

We hope that you find the report informative and thought-provoking and that you will consider it a constructive contribution to the policy-making process in primary education.

Click here to download the report

Is sinne le meas

Seán Cottrell & Gerry Murphy