After years of relative stability, the coming year will be a dynamic one in primary education as the new curriculum takes root and schools launch a new drive to combat literacy problems.
First, an advance warning for parents. For the second year in succession, every primary school in the State will close for six days this year to allow for in-service training for teachers on the new curriculum.
Originally, the Department of Education considered a plan which would have seen schools closing for nine days but this has been abandoned because of pressure from the National Parents' Council (NPC) - primary and school managements.
The Department said it would make every effort to ensure that parents were given proper advance information on school closings after complaints last year.
Many parents complained that the lack of advance information made it difficult for them to arrange childminders and to make alternative arrangements.
The new primary curriculum, the first since 1971, was introduced in 3,000 primary schools last year.
It has been widely praised by teacher and parent groups.
There are six main curricular areas - language, maths, social environmental and scientific education, physical education, arts education and social, personal and health education.
All 3,000 schools in the State will close during the year to allow some 20,000 teachers complete in-service training in the visual arts, Irish and English. Last night, the chief executive of the NPC, Ms Fionnula Kilfeather said that while in-service training for teachers was to be welcomed, it should not lessen the amount of teaching time available to children.
She said the Department of Education should negotiate a new contract with teachers, of a type common in Northern Ireland and Britain, which would allow these essential activities to continue without disrupting the school day. The Department could use the bench-marking review body established under the new national pay deal to pursue this, she said.
The review body could reward teachers for additional productivity and changes in their working day. It seems unlikely that the Department will do this. Although primary teachers endorsed the new pay deal by a very narrow margin, there is still a great deal of discontent about pay.
Many primary teachers fear that inflation will wipe out the pay increases obtained under the new pay deal. They are looking to the bench-marking review to give them more money for the changes they have already made - rather than to reward them for further changes.
Primary teachers will also be watching how the Government reacts to the demand by secondary teachers for a 30 per cent pay increase. Any perceived concession to the ASTI - which voted against the pay deal - could unleash a wave of anger among primary teachers.
The coming year will also feature a more concerted effort to tackle the literacy problems in primary schools. One in 10 children still leaves primary school with significant literacy problems and there has been little significant increase in literacy levels over the past 20 years.
Alarmingly, greater investment in education appears to have made little difference. Since 1978, the average class size in Irish primary schools has declined from 33 to 26 pupils. The number of remedial teachers has increased from 800 to 1,400 in the past decade and the cost of the remedial service has increased to £35 million. But in literacy terms, we are no better off than we were 21 years ago.
The Department hopes the new learning support guidelines will make a real difference. The intention is to provide much more focused support for pupils with learning difficulties. Under the existing approach, pupils with learning difficulties are often taken out of the regular class and placed in a remedial class, often for several years.
The new guidelines will see much closer liaison between the remedial class and the regular class, with regular inter-change between the two relevant teachers. The success of the learning support programme will be closely monitored and parents will be kept informed of progress.