Strategic planning and accountability in Irish education

Abstract

This article considers the impact of the New Public Management culture on Irish education and calls for a debate in relation to the prevailing bureaucratic model of accountability. The influence of the Lisbon Agenda (2000) on education planning is identified and the 2005/7 Education Strategy Statement is analysed using the relevant OECD framework. This analysis reveals the preponderance of macro policy objectives over individual learning objectives. The implications of this finding are considered in the case of two of the five goals of this Strategy Statement, those dealing with the personal and social goals of education and education quality. The paper calls for alternative indicators that will achieve balance between process and product, between responsive and contractual accountability and between individual and system outcomes. Some hopeful developments are identified.

Keywords:

• strategic planning
• education accountability
• performance/process indicators
• balance

Notes

1. One of the more tangible responses came with the establishment of the Strategic Policy Unit in 1999.

2. HLG 5 is not considered here because it is concerned with macro planning, policy formulation and delivery.

3. These include the implementation of National Anti-Poverty Strategy, the National Drugs Strategy, working towards social inclusion at Departmental and cross-Departmental levels, the work of the Education Disadvantage Committee and DESI and the National Education Welfare Board.

4. Two broad approaches to education for lifelong learning may be identified:

• An explicitly integrative approach to implementing lifelong learning along a continuum from cradle to grave, one that challenges post-primary education to promote holistic learner-centred approaches to learning and teaching and adheres to a core learning objective of preparing the student for a life of learning rather than for a terminal examination OR

• A sectoral approach focusing particularly on adult or second chance education and vocational education and training.

While Ireland has been included among the countries that ‘favour a more explicitly integrative approach to implementing lifelong learning... across the full continuum of teaching and learning’ (CEDEFOP & EURYDICE 2001), it is clear from various official reports including the strategy statements’ treatment of social inclusion, that that the dominant tendency in Ireland is to see lifelong learning in terms of second-chance education, adult education and vocational education and training. Interestingly, the challenge of meeting the ‘impact of demographic change and lifelong learning’ in the 2003 statement was abbreviated to ‘meeting the impact of demographic change’ in 2005.

5. Between June and December 2006 20 post-primary whole school evaluations (WSE) and 263 stand-alone subject inspections were published on the DES website.

6. Arising from the CERI Schooling for the Future study.