School closures highlight our deeply fragmented education system To meet challenges facing society, we need a coherent, equality-based system
Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 00:00 Colm O Connor
Empty classrooms: “For more than 80 years our education system has been fragmented by history, meaning that it now lacks any sense of agility.” File photograph: iStock
One of the few benefits of the school closures is that it has highlighted several structural problems in our education system. These problems run deeper than fraught industrial disputes and have their origins in the late 1930s, when the new Constitution allocated the Department of Education a role that was second to that of the dioceses and religious orders.