Our society is changing faster than our education system

About eight years ago, some colleagues and I noted that the growing numbers of children from ethnic minority backgrounds was not being matched by changes in the textbooks and resource materials available to teachers. School can be a bewildering experience for children at the best of times, but a school environment that has no links at all to the culture of your home is likely to be even more so.

We decided to develop a book of children’s stories that reflected the diversity of Irish classrooms, and so we met with groups of women from ethnic minority groups, collected the stories they told us and had them illustrated by a gifted teenage artist. The result was Stories from Eiriu’s Island, which was published by the CDU in Mary Immaculate College.

Looking back on Eiriu’s Island one of the things that is striking is that the stories in it came from Irish mythology, France, the Traveller community, the Philippines and Nigeria: none of the stories in it were collected from Eastern European ethnic minority groups. The reason is obvious: the stories were collected before the accession of Eastern European countries into the EU.  In the few years since accession, the landscape of diversity in Irish schools has changed dramatically, meaning that even our reasonably recent attempt to provide up-to-date resources has quickly been overtaken by events.

This raises questions about the dominance of unchanging textbooks in the Irish education system, but also about how teachers and schools can work to keep resources up to date. One of the points that we made in Eiriu’s Island was how enjoyable and easy it was to collect stories from parents. Perhaps such school-parent links will provide one of the ways of ensuring our schools reflect our changing society.

Is equality a central concept in our school mathematics?

The decision by one of the fringe parties in the upcoming European parliament elections to engage in ‘anti-immigrant’ propaganda highlights some of the challenges for those of us engaged in education.

It shows again that racism enters into public life from many sources: political, economic, cultural and interpersonal.  Since racist messages come from so many different sources in our society, we cannot expect schools to simply ‘teach racism out of existence’.  We all know that schools are often asked to deal with every social issue that arises as if that gives the state the right to opt out of all other responsibility for the problem in question.  Unfortunately, such a strategy will never succeed.

At the same time, schools are not powerless.

Part of the ‘anti-immigrant’ propaganda being put forward at the moment rests upon the manipulation of figures for PPS numbers being issued each year.  The use of such statistics and figures is intended to give veneer of objectivity to such positions.  Although such statistics can easily be questioned and analysed and the prejudice that underpins them can be exposed, this often does not happen in media commentary.  It is left to the listener or reader to decode the statistics and identify the ideology that they conceal.

The capacities to read, decode, and understand the ideological position that is hidden behind statistics is a key part of intercultural competence.  This means we need to link student’s mathematical studies to the politics of real life, and to enable them to see that things that are often presented as matters of ‘fact’ can be used to justify dangerous prejudices.  The same goes, of course, for ’statements of fact’ that are not presented in the form of numbers, but students of post-primary English generally do get the opportunity to learn the skills of critical reading of the media.  Can the same be said for students of Mathematics?

Do we make ‘equals’ a central concept in our school mathematics?

Does Ireland need Freedom Riders?

Those born outside of Ireland now account for almost 10 per cent of the population of Irish primary schools according to figures which became available this week.  This ten per cent is roughly evenly divided between those who are described as nationals of an EU state other than Ireland, and those who are described as ‘non-EU nationals’.  The data is based on estimates by school principals.

This diversity is not spread evenly across Irish schools.  While about a quarter of schools have more than 10 per cent of their population drawn from such minority ethnic groups, as many as 20 per cent have no children from such ethnic minority backgrounds in their school at all.

This data re-emphasises the extent to which the large number of small, independently-operated schools facilitates a segregation within Irish education.  As far back as the 1950s other countries put in place policies to challenge segregated education.  Ireland has never had such policies.  And, while a de facto segregated system has long operated in Ireland at a cost to working class children and those from the Traveller community, it seems that other ethnic minorities are now being added to that list.

In the early 1960s a group of civil rights activists took buses from Washington bound for New Orleans as part of a campaign against racial segregation.  They were known as the Freedom Riders.  Maybe now, fifty years later, it is time for Ireland to at last step on the bus.

137 years worth of education lost each day

According to figures from the National Education Welfare Board (NEWB), more than 50,000 Irish students are absent from school each day.  This translates into the equivalent of 137 years worth of school days lost every day.  Prior research has established that absenteeism from school is more prevalent among students from working class backgrounds and members of the Traveller community than among other students. Those who have high rates of absenteeism are more likely to leave school early, to do poorly in exams and have difficulty getting work after school.

These figures hardly come as a shock; they are consistent with patterns that have been observed over a period of years. What should be shocking is the fact that we have done so little to deal with this issue, despite the fact that we know so much about how schools and teachers contribute to absenteeism.

In 2007 the NEWB published an Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) research report into absenteeism. It identified that:

• ability-based streaming or banding appears to contribute to absenteeism among those in lower streams
• attendance is higher in contexts with more positive teacher-pupil interaction (such as students being told their work is good, students being asked questions and being praised for answers)
• attendance is lower in contexts with more negative teacher-pupil interactions
• students who feel that teachers don’t care about them and that they can’t talk to their teacher if there is a problem are more likely to have high rates of absenteeism

The report’s authors conclude: “There are many broader socio-economic factors shaping attendance in school, which to a large extent are outside the influence of the educational system… However, there are also many things that can be done at the school level to help tackle the problem of poor attendance… [A] more positive school climate, especially in terms of creating a happy, supportive, interesting learning environment and promoting positive interaction with teachers is likely to have positive benefits in terms of student attendance and retention”

Will this week’s shocking figures spark a change in the way in which we do business in Irish education or will they illustrate, once more, that while one day lost is a tragedy, 50,000 days lost are a statistic?

The ESRI report for the NEWB can be found on http://www.newb.ie/downloads/pdf/ESRI_NEWB_Report.pdf