The year 2022, one hundred years since the foundation of the State, provides an opportunity to reflect on the development of policy in relation to educational equality over the course of the last century, including promises made and opportunities lost. This article looks back at one hundred years of education policy through an equality lens,…

From the mid-1960s, the teaching force in Catholic schools in Ireland that for so long had been composed primarily of members of religious orders began to change as a large number returned to the secular world and recruitment levels dropped rapidly. Concurrently there was an outpouring of order-focused hagiographic works. During the 1980s, a range…

This paper charts the development of one of Ireland's first comprehensive schools located in Carraroe in County Galway. Through a systematic, historical analysis of Department of Education and diocesan correspondence, this article provides a unique insight into how official policy was reconciled at ground level. The analysis exposes the ambiguity…

A long tradition of both State and religious interest and support characterised provision for education on the island of Ireland from the 1700s. Following the partition of Ireland in the 1920s, the newly created political entities of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland forged separate and distinct education policy trajectories that largely…

This article examines the perspectives of 14 primary school teachers subjected to a marriage ban in Ireland between 1932 and 1958. This oral history study provides a unique platform to examine the construction and articulation of these women's historical memories. Interrogating their perspectives on the marriage ban provides an important window…

This article is an account of the actions and achievements, i.e. the "contribution", of the Ireland Province of the Vincentian Congregation, known officially as "the Congregation of the Mission", in respect of Catholic education in Ireland and England. The approach is, first, to outline the motives and intentions of the…

Education is not a neutral process, it can be used to establish and maintain conformity or be part of a process of liberation and social change (Freire, 1979; hooks, 1994). The Irish State's failure to acknowledge this lack of neutrality has characterised the formal education system in Ireland since its inception. From the introduction of the…

Catholic universities need to develop strong Catholic identities. Yet, equally pressing is the need to welcome and value non-Catholic scholars, including their contributions to the university's Catholic mission and their critical assessments of the Catholic tradition. Blessed John Henry Newman embodies both Catholic faithfulness and exemplary…

This paper discusses the manner in which the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland attempted to impose denominational control on the system of vocational education introduced by the state in 1930. Considerable research on education has been conducted within the period in question; however, the area addressed in this paper has been largely neglected by…

This paper documents the introduction of the comprehensive schools in the Irish education system in 1963 and seeks to illustrate how the two most powerful organisations most directly involved in Irish education during this period, the Department of Education and the Catholic Hierarchy, viewed the introduction of the comprehensive schools. Through…

The movement for the higher education of women in Ireland in the nineteenth century has traditionally been viewed as a Protestant initiative. Scholarship suggests that the Irish campaign developed along the same lines as the English movement, gaining from and growing out of the English advances. Leading Protestant schools for girls have been…

The implications of disestablishment for Catholic objectives in higher education in Ireland, 1869-1879, are discussed, and the interrelationship of the questions of Church, land, and university education in Ireland is examined. Attention is directed to the extent to which the force of Ultramontanism, as expressed in the Catholic hierarchy's…

Presents an account of the philosophical strategies used by the Catholic Church in Ireland to cope with modernizing forces in education. Examines the ways that the Church conscripted and adapted educational reforms that challenged neither the primacy of the Church or the dominant culture. (MJP)