Policy and Partnership Marie Céline Clegg IBVM What determines directions in educational policy? Educational policy choices made at any given time can tell us a great deal about the role of the state within a particular society and its attitude to diversity within a contemporary culture. It is reasonable to expect that, in a pluralist environment, the state would allow for the involvement of a variety of education providers in policy development. This raises significant questions in relation to how service providers and the state co-operate, each respecting the proper role and remit of the other, in an increasingly pluralist Ireland where there is a growing emphasis on catering for diversity within the system. The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, speaking at a Mass in St Patrick’s College in DCU to mark the beginning of the academic year, 2017/18, emphasised the importance of the Catholic school entering into relationship with schools of other patronage. He also referred to the importance of good relationship between all those involved: ‘All the agents of education in Ireland are called to foster relationships of respect, tolerance and welcome, in such a manner as to build a respectful pluralist model of education for a new pluralist Ireland’.1 The Catholic school has been described as existing at the intersection between the Church’s worldview and the necessary responsibility of the state to oversee education systems.2 The nature of the dialogue between Church and public authorities on the provision of education in a Catholic school is crucial. The significance of this dialogue is emphasised by Dr Leonardo Franchi, Director of Catholic Teacher Education at Glasgow University. He suggests that such dialogue can be at two levels. The first is the political level, involving a process ‘which defends the right of Catholic schools to exist within a pluralist educational system’.3 The second can focus on how the Church’s rich educational heritage can make a significant contribution to public debates on education. How? Herein lies the opportunity in what Franchi describes as the ‘politically sensitive role’ of the Catholic school in offering ‘a distinctive approach to education which promotes an integral Marie Céline Clegg IBVM Studies • volume 108 • number 429 20 vision of academic learning and human formation ’.4 Fr David Tuohy, describes diversity and pluralism as cultural goals while seeing behind these concepts a vision of society that ‘both caters for different individual interests and, at the same time, promotes a high level of social cohesion’.5 In examining directions in educational policy, Tuohy returns to three different paradigms that were considered by Denis O’Sullivan to have driven Irish educational developments since the early 1920s.6 The paradigms described by O’Sullivan in a review of cultural politics and Irish education were as follows: – The theocentric paradigm, which can be seen as traced to the setting up of the system in 1831. The aims of education were determined by unchanging, and largely, undisputed, Christian principles. At that time, the role of the state was subsidiary to that of those providing the service. – The mercantile paradigm, associated with the late 1960s and reflected in the Investment in Education report. Policy-making was seen as more broadly based and democratic while there was an emphasis on the role of the state as requiring accountability on the part of those providing education to the ‘client’. – The social paradigm, described as having two axes, a human capital approach and a second linked to modernist discourse and the dominant understanding of equality, difference, virtue, control and power. While it is realistic to presume that all three paradigms can be operative at any one time, it is also argued that the current paradigm is a social one. It is characterised by an acceptance of diversity as a value in itself. Successive Irish governments claim that policies have been driven by quality within education, where the individual’s interest is accommodated in society and this is accompanied by a promotion of social cohesion. A question arises, however, in relation to the methods used to promote this vision. This leads us to examine more closely the actual process of policy development at national level...