Swords Educate Together Secondary School

SETSAG Meeting 12^th March 2010 Minutes and General Progress Report

1. Educate Together formally submitted an application for an ET secondary school in Swords/Fingal on the 1^st of March 2010. (tentatively referring the 12 acre site outlined in Planning Permission F09A/0319 in Mooretown and set aside for a school)
2.  Is ET a patron for second level? Yes, on being challenged on the question the Department of Education conceded that there is in fact no legal reason why ET cannot open secondary schools. However, until we establish a large enough demand locally the foot dragging by the DES is expected to continue.
3. John Hologhan has been appointed Communications Manager by ET as a mark of its determination to communicate its philosophy on education to the public at large and the state, and has set out (and has a budget to implement) a five year plan.
4. In SETSAG the position of Public Relations Officer (communicate with the media) has yet to be filled. Bob Dowling has offered in the meanwhile to do up press releases which SETSAG will then forward to the Newspapers etc.
5. Thornleigh ET National School: The Open Evening is on the 9^th of March was a success and more Expressions of Interest Forms were filled in. As a general comment with respect to this type of activity we had 394 people sign the petition we had in the Pavilions and over 500 children to date are expressed as being interested in attending an ET Second Level School. Collation of information is still ongoing! This work is important as a requirement of between 800~1,000 will have to be demonstrated (Fingal County Council has highlighted the need based on Fingal’s changing demographics and has a second level school on its 2011~2017 plan but still…). FCC’s plan will be put up for comment between April and June 2010 in FCC Offices so by all means communicate your preference that the new school should be an ET School.
6. The Holy Well National School: has been given approval to open in September 2010 which will bring to three the number of ET Schools in Swords alone. There is also very strong interest from  Lusk and Rush.
7. Political Support: Before the last SETSAG meeting Dr. James Reilly (TD) met SETSAG and reaffirmed his support for the ET form of Education as he has done already many times in his  Dail speeches. He highlighted the paradox whereby the government acknowledges that a new paradigm of education is required and yet myopically manages to miss ET jumping up and down in the corner, its white knuckled hand waving ET’s highly innovative Blueprint for second level education.

Councillor Anne Devitt was supportive in a more circumspect manner and challenged us to what difference exactly would a child experience in an ET versus a VEC school. The emphasis on ‘learning to learn’ indicated in the Blueprint as opposed to rote learning was explained and a copy of the Key Differences ET/VEC document  was given to her for reference.

In this context: Two weeks ago, Craig Barrett ( ex CEO of Intel Ireland), said that the Irish education system was mediocre, one week ago a senior Google manager (Robin Green?) commented that the calibre of people they encounter in interviews doesn’t match their paper qualification (limited problem solving skills apparently) and this weekend, Niall Fitzgerald sometime CEO of Unilever and more recently Reuters, talks of how he left Ireland to escape the incestuous business-politics culture in Ireland in which nobody is ever accountable for anything and therefore merit or responsibility aren’t of proper import. Peter Sutherland (chairman of BP plc and erstwhile chairman of Goldman Sachs International) in an interview Trinity College late last year described the situation in Ireland as at best ‘murky’. To change a country, first improve its education system.

As a general comment meetings with TD’s and Councillors will be an ongoing and continuous activity.

8. Workshops: A general ET Second Level workshop was held at Kilmainham Hilton on the 27^th February and out of this two Workshop Groups were reinvigorated namely:
   • Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Methodologies, Management, Structure and Policies – Coordinator: Ann Ryan
   • Campus and built environment – Coordinator: Jarlath Munnelly

9. Next Meeting of SETSAG will be on the 15th April 2010 at Thornleigh ET National School (Applewood, Swords) at 7.30pm. Please come along if you wish to be involved.

SETSAG: Vincent O'Malley, Malcolm Carter, Gerry McKevitt, Siobhan Hegarty, Sea Musharford, Tony Mackey, Catherine Delaney, Deirdre Moffat, Carlo Volto, Patrick Quearney, Caroline Fitzsimons, Sonja Clayton, Deanne McGuinness, Lisa Donaldson, Tony Dolan.

http://www.setsecondary.org  - SETSAG general purpose site, allow people to subscribe etc

http://groups.google.com/group/setsag - useful SETSAG documents are posted here

http://www.educatetogether.ie main ET website due for relaunch March 19^th 2010