IPPN Annual Principals’
CONFERENCE
2023
IPPN Principals’ CONFERENCE 2023 The Gleneagle Hotel, Killarney, 15th to 17th November
Páiric Clerkin IPPN CEO
The theme of our conference this year is Leading with Purpose. It is a chance for us all to reflect on our own leadership role, and on what our core purpose is as a school leader. The Leadership Pathways session will focus on what we as leaders can do for ourselves. It will be an opportunity to do what our network set out to achieve when it was set up over 20 years ago – to facilitate peer-to-peer support and the sharing of effective practices. You will also hear an outline of some of the progress achieved since our Sustainable Leadership report was launched this time last year. Our research confirms that there is a reluctance among potential and emerging leaders to step into formal leadership roles. This is a real concern and a challenge that IPPN will address in the coming years as part of our Emerging Leaders Project. That project will have a significant impact in terms of fully and actively embracing and supporting our emerging leaders. We are also in the process of developing our ‘Leadership Portfolio’ to support those Emerging Leaders when it comes to the recruitment process. We believe that both of those initiatives are important actions on the part of IPPN to support sustainable leadership. They will help build leadership capacity in our schools and in so doing provide extra support to school leadership teams. The 2023 research by our colleagues in Deakin University tells us that things are getting even more challenging in terms of the sustainability of your role. I restate our objective – it is to enhance leadership capacity, effectiveness and sustainability. Whatever undermines this objective must be adequately addressed so that school leaders can focus on leading teaching and learning, which is ultimately our core purpose. A key part of progressing that work is to build support amongst stakeholders for the key recommendations within the report to be actioned. Collaboration is critical in order to succeed in addressing some of the more complex challenges that we face in meeting the needs of our schools – such as teacher supply, SEN resourcing and developing appropriate supports for those responsible for school governance.
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The theme of our conference this year is Leading with Purpose. It is a chance for us all to reflect on our own leadership role, and on what our core purpose is as a school leader.
IPPN CEO, Páiric Clerkin
In Budget 2024, IPPN strongly advocated for four key improvements: enhancing leadership capacity in schools the resourcing of schools to meet SEN needs the need for a review of the current governance structure and the provision of adequate funding to schools. There has been some progress but there is significant scope for further progress. The announcement that deputy principals in Special Schools will have administrative status is a welcome but overdue recognition of the acute challenges in such settings. The failure to restore and expand the provision for ‘release’ time for deputy principals in all schools undermines leadership capacity and compromises their effectiveness and sustainability. IPPN’s position paper on SEN Allocations, Resources & Appeals emphasises the crucial importance of the accurate and adequate allocation of resources to schools to meet additional needs and the key role that SENOs have to play in such a process. IPPN welcomes the announcements regarding additional teaching and SNA posts and the national recruitment campaign for SENOs. I acknowledge the positive engagement IPPN has had with the Department’s Special Education Section and also with John Kearney from NCSE. Central to IPPN’s submission on the issue of school governance was a call for a review of the existing Board of Management governance structure. The Minister’s foreword in the Governance Manual for Primary Schools 2023-27 referred to such
IPPN President, Louise Tobin
Rachel Doogue facilitating Leadership Pathways