Over the past week or so my ministerial visits have take me to a number of educational institutions, including UCD and DCU in Dublin, and the national school in the Claddagh area of Galway City.
They are part of a process that began with a conference on intercultural education involving key interest groups which was hosted in Dublin last October by me and Minister for Education Batt O'Keefe, and over the coming months work will be completed on an intercultural strategy for schools.
Batt O'Keefe has devolved decision-making on diversity issues to the Office of the Minister for Integration and the Integration Unit from Education is now located at my office.
Some 10 per cent of primary and seven per cent of secondary schools are now composed of immigrants or children of immigrants, and the message from the schools is that teachers, parents and school communities are generally coping well with the challenges thrown up by immigration in recent years.
The language support resource has been ramped up considerably and last year accounted for in excess of €100m. And the lesson from the controversy last summer over the wearing of the hijab in schools is that best practice tends to be bottom-up and guided by practical compromises driven by the experience of dedicated principals, teaching staff and committed parents.
The patronage model in Irish schools, tradition and the importance of the local school means that localised innovation can often be far better than administrative direction from on high.
Of course, resources are important where the percentage of non-Irish students reaches critical levels of 20 per cent and above. That said, the nature of schools’ efforts is still defined by the leadership offered by the school principal and the extent to which the whole school sees the benefit in managing diversity well.
While the classroom is different to the employment setting, the broad evidence is that those business and school organisations that invest in planning for diversity do better overall.
Indeed, a school-based study done by the Paris based OECD shows that where immigration is a significant factor in an individual school's numbers, the educational outcomes are marginally better than those where diversity is not a factor.
This study gives the lie to the often-held belief by some indigenous parents that their child's chances of doing well are worse where there are immigrant children present.
With the downturn, teachers and parents will have to do more with less, but evidence from the schools is that the ethos or enthusiasm of the educator and parent body is what makes the difference.
Batt O'Keefe rightly notes the importance of teaching quality rather than crude teacher-pupil ratios as being the determinant of academic success or failure in schools.
Conor Lenihan TD is Minister for Integration and represents the constituency of Dublin South West, which includes Tallaght, Greenhills, Firhouse, Templeogue and Boherna-breena
