An insider's guide to education.
To the surprise of many, Mary Hanafin is back in Education and all that loose talk about a promotion to Enterprise and Employment has been put on the back burner - for now.
But anyone expecting Hanafin to snooze through her second term has got a rude awakening. Instead, she has hit the ground running by moving to reform medical education, pushing on with national testing at primary level and sorting out those fussy school management bodies who opposed her sensible move to reform the Leaving Cert timetable.
Hanafin is now in a strong enough position to impose real reform in the education sector because of her political stature and her popularity with the wider public.
Will she grasp this opportunity and leave an indelible impression on the sector?
The early signs may be encouraging but the real challenge is ahead - recasting the education system to meet the needs of a changing, multi-cultural Ireland. This will require much better planning, more joined-up thinking across all State agencies and, critically, a shake-up of the current patronage system at primary level.
Hanafin is naturally supportive of the Catholic Church's role in education (apparently she was uncomfortable with what she viewed as an anti-Church strain in some media coverage recently), but she also knows that the current patronage system is creaking under the challenges of the new Ireland.
The practical challenge is to establish a new State-run system at primary level. The local Vocational Education Committees (VECs) are anxious to take on the task, but there seems little enthusiasm in the Department about this. Watch this space!
At this time of great tumult in Irish education, you would expect the education departments in the various third-level colleges to be contributing and shaping the public debate on the future shape of school patronage.
Not a bit of it. With some honourable exceptions, the various education departments have had little or nothing to say.
Now that's what we call a missed opportunity.
