This report is intended to inform the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) review of senior cycle and draws on the first cycle of the consultation process with 41 schools with different profiles and characteristics. The first cycle of the process has looked at teacher, parent...

It is well established that cultural and economic resources imparted to children vary significantly by social class. Literature on concerted cultivation has highlighted the extent to which out-of-school activities can reproduce social inequalities in the classroom. Within this literature...

The Droichead pilot programme is designed to provide whole-school support for teacher induction. The programme is innovative in being led at school level, by a Professional Support Team (PST) consisting of the principal, mentor(s) and other member(s). This working paper presents preliminary...

This paper explores the way in which truancy levels are structured by individual social class and the social mix of the school within the Republic of Ireland. Drawing on a national survey of young people, truancy levels are found to be higher among working-class and Traveller students. Truancy...

Recent evidence shows increasing wellbeing and mental health difficulties among young people in Ireland (Carroll et al., 2024) and internationally (WHO, 2021). This evidence emerges against the backdrop of significant policy focus, with the Department of Education publishing the Wellbeing Policy...

This paper assesses the role of shadow education (SE), i.e. organised learning activities outside formal schooling, in the lives of secondary school students of different social backgrounds and in different school settings, in a high-stakes context. It draws on multilevel analysis of...

Personal assistance (PA) services have been an evolving part of Irish provision for people with physical and sensory impairments for roughly three decades, but the lack of national standards for allocation, provision or data collection have made it an opaque system characterised by piecemeal or...

This paper examines socio-emotional and academic outcomes among 17-year-olds with different types of special educational needs and the role of parental educational expectations in shaping these outcomes, using data from Ireland's national longitudinal study of children. The analysis takes...

While a number of international studies have attempted to assess the influence of geographic accessibility on the decision to participate in higher education, this issue has not been addressed in detail in an Irish context. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap and to present a higher...