Castleknock College, an all-boys fee-paying school in Dublin, was in the news this week for doing something progressive. One hundred and ninety years into its existence, it has appointed a woman principal.
With this news, we can only hope that there may be more jobs open to women than we previously appreciated. Some day, for example – if we women keep playing our cards right – one us might get to be appointed Minister for Finance or Foreign Affairs or president of the GAA or governor of the Central Bank. A woman might even eventually become leader of Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, or even one day taoiseach. We could have a woman presenter of the Late Late Show, or chief executive of the Health Service Executive or even – and perhaps I’m just losing the run of myself now – a woman priest.
While women remain frustratingly absent from the upper echelons of many of Ireland’s longest-established institutions, the disproportionately low numbers of women in senior positions in schools is particularly hard to defend, and yet it is rarely discussed. It is a collective blind spot – it’s as though we’ve become so accustomed to the idea that men simply make more effective school principals that we don’t even question it any more.
But let’s do exactly that for a moment.
READ MORE
The total number of female teachers in Irish primary schools in the academic year 2024 to 2025 was almost 40,000, while the total number of male teachers was slightly fewer than 7,500. To put this another way, women make up 84 per cent of all primary teachers.
[ Work Women hold fewer than one in five chief executive positions in IrelandOpens in new window ]
Meanwhile, there are 2,118 female principals and 1,096 male principals in Irish primary schools – meaning men hold 16 per cent of the teaching jobs and slightly more than one third of principal posts. By extension, if my calculations are correct (and perhaps I ought to ask a man to check), a male teacher is more than twice as likely to become a primary school principal as his female colleague, despite the far lower numbers of men in the profession overall.
At secondary level, excluding ETB schools, the situation is even bleaker. Around two-thirds of secondary teachers are women and one-third are men. And yet men hold 55 per cent of the principal jobs.
The usual, lazy riposte here is that women don’t make it to the top in teaching because they’re more likely to opt for flexible work patterns, to take a career break to care for children, or to work part-time or job share when they return. And while that’s certainly borne out by the data, it would be far more useful to think of these figures as a symptom rather than a cause of the problem. These days, stepping back from your career for a period to take on more caring responsibilities at home is not supposed to be a permanent barrier to progression. And in lots of careers it no longer is.
The paucity of women in the highest leadership positions in schools matters not just because women bring different, and essential qualities, to the management of schools, just as they do to companies or countries.
It also matters because of the message it sends to the girls and young women in education during the up to 8,400 hours they will spend in a classroom between the ages of 5 and 18, when they will be mostly taught by women, in schools often led by men. It shows them that they can work hard, be excellent at their jobs, care passionately about what they do, and if they do everything right, they’ll have roughly half the chance of the next nearest man of making it to the top.
And it matters a lot for the message it sends to boys and men, because it is during childhood that the most deep-rooted stereotypes take hold.
Late last year, a six-year study into Children’s School Lives published its findings on the differences in the experiences and attitudes of boys and girls in Irish primary schools. It found that primary schoolchildren associate boys who are “good” with intelligence and strength, and “good” girls with kindness. The report found girls are more likely to agree that boys and girls can do equally well in tasks, while boys who attend all-boys’ schools are least likely to agree.
Castleknock College’s new principal, Elaine Kelly, quite rightly said that while it would “fantastic” if her appointment inspired young people, especially young women, it was important that “the young men of the college see women in leadership positions as well”.
Sometimes all it takes for these inequalities to miraculously starting righting themselves is for someone to call them out.
In 2016, when a review into gender equality in third level was set up by the Higher Education Authority, there had never been a female leader – either president or provost – of any Irish university. From 1592, when the State’s first university was established, right up to 2020, no woman was adjudged sufficiently qualified to lead a university.
The following year, a gender equality taskforce was established. Three years later, the University of Limerick appointed the country’s first female president. And then, in 2021, Trinity College Dublin appointed its first female provost in its 400-plus year history. The same year, a female president was appointed at Maynooth University.
Universities didn’t become overnight bastions of equality – in 2023, more than two thirds of professors and 58 per cent of associate professors were male – but having women in leadership positions is a step in the right direction. And it needs to start from the beginning of the educational journey.
So I’m calling it out. In 2025, a school appointing a woman as its principal should not be a big enough deal to make the news.
