An insider's guide to education

Is there about to be a shake-up in the upper echelons of the Department of Education? The Department will advertise shortly for another assistant secretary to fill the post left by Tom Boland, head of the Higher Education Authority.

The new appointment will give secretary general Brigid McManus (pictured right) an opportunity to shuffle the pack among her senior management group - if she deems this necessary. McManus inherited her top management group when she left Finance to take the top job in Marlborough Street 14 months ago. Will she now grasp the opportunity for radical change?

Sad to see the demise of Kylemore Abbey boarding school in Connemara. The Benedictine nuns are phasing it out because of the fall in vocations.

But why not hand over the school to a lay trusteeship along the now well-established route? The nuns say the relatively small size of the school makes this unrealistic - but what difference does this make?

Still, the nuns did attract a huge amount of favourable publicity - thanks in no small measure to the big league Dublin PR agency, Drury Communications, who handled the messy media business on their behalf.

The Joint Management Body (JMB) the group which manages most of our second-level schools has, at last , found someone to fill the vacancy left by its former general secretary George O'Callaghan. But that's a long story.

First, the group announced that Mark Fennell had taken the post. But changing personal circumstances forced Fennell to opt out.

Happily, Ferdia Kelly has now agreed to take the plum post. Aged 51, Kelly is a former principal of Ardscoil Rís CBS in Griffith Avenue, Dublin. Since 1998 he has been the director of the education development office with St Mary's Province of the Christian Brothers.

That long-promised report from the Task Force on School Discipline is still awaiting publication - even though it has been on the minister's desk for weeks.

Officials say the report will be published as soon as the Irish language version is printed. Translation? Shortly before the teacher conferences at Easter. Meanwhile, (a begrudging) congrats to chairperson, Maeve Martin of NUI Maynooth, who has kept an iron grip on task force members - and clamped down on any media leaks. Other task forces, please don't copy!

Got any education gossip? E-mail us, in confidence, at teacherspet@irish-times.ie