Anseo.net - If I were the Minister for Education

Join me as I tackle a question that I feel we should be asking more often: Is the Catholic Certificate in Religious Education discriminatory? Following on from Peter Maguire's excellent article on th…

There is an unprecedented shortage of primary school teachers in Ireland, according to an Irish Times article after a joint survey from the INTO, IPPN and CPSMA revealed there are over 800 teaching p…

In this special interview with the co-founder of Clever.com, Dab Carroll, I talk about all things Clever but also about the US education system. We also discuss his thoughts on technology in educatio…

In this episode, I discuss the people that made it in 11th to 20th position in the Irish Times 2011 article and find out where they are now.

Show notes and links can be found on my Medium channel: htt…

Sarah Webb and Conor Bredin join me to discuss the fantastic Discover Irish Children's Books initiative (https://discoveririshkidsbooks.ie/)

Join us as we delve into the world of kids' books and make…

Twelve years ago, the Irish Times published an article, out of the blue, which listed the top 50 most influential people in education. It was compiled over four weeks and the journalists stated that …

One of my biggest bug bears is when a primary school calls itself inclusive. For one, in Ireland, it is impossible to be fully inclusive because schools are completely reliant on government funding a…

Why are primary school teachers like me going on the radio talking about banning smartphones? In this episode I wonder why it is schools, yet again, being asked to police society.

Blog Post: https://m…

If you were listening to the last episode of If I Were the Minister for Education, you’ll know that I was talking about Artificial Intelligence and how I believed it was going to change everything. I…

Technology and education have a strange relationship in Ireland. If a teacher said to a parent or another teacher or anyone at all that they really didn’t like Maths so they don’t bother teaching it …

Coming up to interview season, I was approached by someone that has been working in the system for a number of years and hasn’t managed to get a permanent post. You’ll probably be thinking, there mus…

What better way to celebrate my beloved Sheffield United's return to the Premier League than talking about soccer and education! In this interview, I talk to Mark Connaughton from KlaasKickz, a fanta…

Technology is central to most people’s work and lives and, for schools, it’s no different. Despite this, the Department of Education failed to provide a regular stream of funding for almost two decad…

I'm always giving out about our education system so when I got the opportunity to speak about the Canadian system, I was only happy to give Ireland a break for an episode. However, I didn't expect to…

The best talks I ever saw live happened in the same conference. It was the IPPN conference in 2012. Imagine this as a lineup - Mary Robinson, who needs no introduction; Michael Fullan, one of the wor…

When I think of podcasting, I think of two Joes: Joe Molloy, the retired Irish primary teacher who started podcasting before the word was invented in the late 1990's/early noughties; and also Joe Dal…

It’s probably quite fitting that the 10-year anniversary of the Patronage and Pluralism Forum Report ended in the same way it started - with a huge amount of apathy. When the Forum was set up to gath…

The voice of SNAs is often missing from primary education. For example, SNAs are not allowed to be on boards of management of primary schools as staff representatives. In this episode, I interview Ma…

According to reports in the media, in January 2023, the CPSMA wrote to the Minister for Children, Roderick O’Gorman to say they were against the teaching of gender issues because what it means to be …

In part 2 of the interview, we start to tackle some difficult questions about the Irish language and why we aren't close to being a bilingual nation. We end up with a couple of interesting ideas, inc…