As the classrooms go quiet and the schools close their doors for the summer, the Education Nation podcast also takes a break. As we do, we want to highlight a gross inequity hidden within the system which has emerged in our preliminary conversations with guests for season 2.
School principals in Special Schools are being disproportionately and unfairly penalised. Unlike their counterparts in mainstream settings, principals in special schools are not paid for the work they do in managing the majority of their staff. This stems from a longstanding anomaly in how the principal’s allowance is calculated—an anomaly that has gone unaddressed even as the State celebrates the expansion of provision for students with additional needs.
One principal put it starkly: “In my school I am responsible for the recruitment, induction and management of 65 staff, but I am only paid an allowance for 16 of them.”
When staff don’t count—literally
In mainstream schools, most staff are teachers, so the principal’s allowance tends to reflect the real scale of people management involved in the leadership of the school community. But in special schools, the majority of staff are Special Needs Assistants, bus escorts, caretakers, secretaries and other essential personnel. These roles are indispensable to the functioning of a special school—yet they do not ‘count’ when calculating the principal’s allowance.
A second principal, who will feature on the Education Nation podcast this autumn, estimates she is losing over 50% of her allowance because of this calculation method. A third principal broke it down even further:
“I get paid an allowance of €23,715 based on the number of teachers in my school. If I were paid for all my staff, it would be over €48,000.”
A symptom of a much bigger problem
As we have learned from the many guests we have interviewed for the podcast this season, this injustice is not an isolated quirk—it is part of a broader pattern of “pennypinching” that has shaped Irish education for decades. The facts speak for themselves. Ireland currently spends 2.8% of GDP on education from early childhood to third level, placing us last in the OECD.
While Ireland can rightly take pride in its educational outcomes, these achievements are built on the backs of underresourced schools, teachers and school leaders. The underfunding is largely invisible to the public, masked by the extraordinary dedication of those who keep the system afloat.
Most parents of children in special schools have no idea their principal is being unfairly treated. Many parents of primary school children do not realise that their school survives only through fundraising, parental contributions and the daily miracles performed by principals, teachers and Boards of Management—every one of them a volunteer.
The growing gap between rhetoric and reality
Throughout this first season of the Education Nation podcast, guests repeatedly highlighted how the financial architecture of the system has failed to keep pace with the demands placed on schools. The result is a widening gap between policy rhetoric and lived reality.
Primary schools, in particular, operate with fewer resources than their postprimary counterparts, despite carrying the heaviest responsibility for early intervention, inclusion and foundational learning. Guests described the exhausting cycle of “making do”: fundraising for basic materials, stretching already thin budgets, and relying heavily on parental contributions simply to maintain essential supports.
As Seamus Mulconry, CEO of CPSMA remarked in Episode 5: “We have always run our primary school system on a shoestring… Even Donald Trump spends more on education than we do.”
Human stories behind the statistics
Since its launch during Catholic Schools Week, the Education Nation podcast has offered a unique window into the lives and experiences of key system leaders and stakeholders. Their stories are deeply human—often moving—and reveal the formative experiences that shaped their journeys in Irish education. Taken together, these stories paint a portrait of a system rich in heritage and sustained by the dedication of teachers and leaders yet strained by rapid societal change and chronic financial neglect. They also highlight the distinctive and continuing contribution of Catholic education in a changing Ireland.
The cost of underfunding: equity and inclusion at risk
Underfunding is not merely an administrative inconvenience. It has profound implications for equity. Schools serving disadvantaged communities are hit hardest, undermining the very inclusion the State claims to champion. Guests spoke of long waiting lists for psychological assessments, insufficient access to SNAs, and the absence of specialist supports that are standard in other countries.
The series makes clear that the underfunding of primary education is not an unfortunate oversight—it is a structural failure. And it is children, especially the most vulnerable, who pay the price.
A final word
Education Nation takes a break for the summer for a few weeks now. We will return in September with an even more interesting set of guests with intriguing stories and insights to share.
