Yvonne O’Toole, principal of the Institute of Education, is standing outside the school’s entrance on Dublin’s Leeson Street as hordes of students pour outside on their lunch break.
Its main competitor, the Dublin Academy of Education in Stillorgan, south Dublin, is also running at capacity. It has about 340 full-time fifth- and sixth-year students and is due to expand next year when it moves to a larger premises in Blackrock. There is a growing grinds culture in Ireland, far in excess of many other European countries. Almost 60 per cent of Leaving Cert students are estimated to be availing of grinds, up from below 50 per cent a decade ago, according
“It just skyrocketed over the last few years and got crazy with demand for grinds ,” says Rónán Murdock, a former grinds teacher who is now chief executive of Grinds360.The sector has no shortage of critics. The education establishment tends to depict grind schools as military training grounds where students are drilled to produce perfect answers to potential questions based on marking schemes.
Contrary to public perception, he says grind schools are not about cramming, rote learning or teaching to the test, he says.“The idea that a student could just learn off a number of essays and regurgitate them blindly in the exam and get full marks? That day is gone. It hasn’t worked since the ‘90s, and I’m not sure how well it ever worked.”
“It’s important to say, this school isn’t for everybody,” O’Toole says. “We interview students coming in here and ask: ‘Is this school right for you?’ You have to be hardworking. You don’t have to be 600 points. You might be heading for 450 – great – but you have to want to work. It’s about that passion of wanting to work.”“Most of our parents struggle to pay the fees. Many of them take out a loan to pay the fees,” she says.
The popularity of grinds, however, is beginning to raise uncomfortable questions around the quality of teaching in regular schools. Teacher shortages in key subject areas mean many students have either reduced subject choice or may be taught by an unqualified or “out of field” teacher.