George O'Callaghan has stepped down after a decade at the head of the body that represents voluntary secondary schools. He explains how a transformed society has affected Irish schools - and not always for the better.

If you're not in education you may never have heard of the Joint Managerial Body (JMB). However, if you have a child of school-going age there's a 60 per cent chance that the JMB is representing his or her school.

The JMB has been the voice of the voluntary secondary school sector since 1972 when the power of the religious orders began its decline. In the intervening years nuns, priests and brothers have been replaced by boards of management and the JMB has fought the corner of the Christian schools without the might of the church behind it.

George O'Callaghan has been general secretary of the JMB for a decade and now that he has bowed out, he can look back at a period of rampant change in denominational education. As student numbers have fallen, voluntary secondary schools have been hardest hit, with closures and amalgamations bringing the number of religious secondary schools down from 470 to 410 over the period. In the meantime, an avalanche of legislative change has made the job of the school board of management very complicated.

Manned by volunteers, school boards are expected to have expertise in the wide range of areas hitherto unexplored in Irish schooling. It's getting harder to recruit members.

The sector is threatened on many fronts. One of the biggest challenges for the JMB at the moment is to secure better funding from the Department of Education. Funding streams for post-primary education in Ireland vary depending on the designation of the school.

O'Callaghan, who is now chief executive of Co Clare VEC, claims that the voluntary schools have been left behind. "The majority of voluntary secondary schools are non-fee paying, since they were invited into the free education scheme in 1967. Those that surrendered fees got capitation grants that have not kept pace with inflation. The budgets in other sectors (community schools and vocational schools) are more elastic. Non-fee-paying secondary schools have had to make do with rigid, insufficient capitation grants," he says.

The rising cost of insurance, in particular, has left many schools on the financial ropes.

"Since 1997 the cost of insuring a school has risen by 100 per cent," says O'Callaghan. "This has been affected by external factors such as 9/11 and internal factors, such as an appreciable increase in public liability claims."

The increase in claims reflects a society-wide change in attitude towards schools. The increased sophistication of students is a positive development in some ways, but poses challenges for schools in others, he says.

"Today's students are more aware of their rights and more demanding of our services. There is too much expected in terms of what schools can actually deliver. There is a constant tension between social culture and school culture. Respect for teachers is not what it was - but that's a society-wide phenomenon. People are losing respect for figures of authority generally."

Many students are more ambitious than they used to be and this has spawned the lamented grinds culture - another problem for providers of mainstream education.

"I don't believe that the grind culture has developed in response to a systematic failure in Irish education. Mainstream schools still deliver. Changes in homes and in society mean that there are more diversions available to students. Grind schools are like study clubs, offering a disciplined environment for revision. That used to happen in the home. Now that parents are better off, they would rather it happened in the grind school."

Bringing parents into the process is a good way of managing these conflicts, says O'Callaghan, and schools have been drawn into wider consultation through the department's School Development Planning Initiative.

"Planning involves consultation with pupils, staff, parents and the community and it has been well received by schools. However, it demands a lot of the school in terms of resources. The JMB has created a support structure for our members which has now been adopted by the department."

It remains to be seen if Whole School Evaluation is quite as successful. The experience of schools to date has been mixed. "Some say it's demanding too much time and too many resources. When shortcomings are pointed out, a response from the department is not always forthcoming. It's a concern for school management that the Minister is now proposing to publish those reports. If the programme merely points to required aspects that are not redressed, then not much will have been achieved," says O'Callaghan.

The JMB has played a critical mediating role between the voluntary sector schools and the other stakeholders in education. Almost every teaching union member in the sector belongs to the ASTI. The group had a choppy course to steer when things went sour between the ASTI and department in 2001.

"That was a very difficult period," O'Callaghan admits. "Give or take a half-a-dozen individuals, all our teachers are ASTI members. We had to negotiate our way through the dispute without alienating the 13,000 teachers involved. Despite all the pain however, the dispute did throw a lot into relief. The level of volunteer work that was propping up the system was immense. By the time the dispute was over, the public had had a glimpse of what was really going on behind the scenes in education."

Of the 400 voluntary secondary schools in Ireland, only a fraction fulfil the stereotype of the well-resourced, exclusive private school. Only 56 JMB members are fee-paying. That said, there are proportionately fewer designated disadvantaged schools in the voluntary sector compared to other types of school.

With the decline of the religious orders and the growing cultural diversity of the State, what role does the voluntary sector now play?

O'Callaghan sees no incompatibility between the continuation of denominational education and a diversifying student population.

"The Christian ethos is tolerant. We are not in the business of being selective. Apart from anything else, equality legislation won't allow it. So far, there have been no significant conflicts in this regard."

The biggest challenge of all is the downturn in religious involvement in the schools, says O'Callaghan, who worries that it will be difficult in the future to maintain Catholic schools as we know them. However, he believes that Irish parents want, and deserve, the option of choosing schooling with a Christian ethos for their children.

"The voluntary secondary sector has made an overwhelming contribution to Irish education. We are facing changing times, but I think that tradition should be preserved. The Catholic ethos brings a certain dynamic to education. It inculcates certain values - the 'hidden curriculum', if you like. All parents should have the chance to avail of that ethos."