Proving and improving

Professor Gerald Grace has many associations with Catholic education in Ireland, through the research community and with Catholic education practitioners. Through his many contacts and his accessibility, he has gently encouraged both research dissemination and guided practitioners towards more effective Catholic schooling. The fact that he can draw on writings and examples from an international context to support his work, alongside his own significant published output, adds weight and credence to his opinions and proposals. Professor Grace was the keynote speaker at the CEIST (Catholic Education an Irish Schools’ Trust) national conference in 2015. ¹ This national conference is an opportunity for principals, deputy principals and chairpersons of boards of CEIST schools to come together to share best practice and hear new ideas to nourish them in their roles as faith leaders. Professor Grace addressed the CEIST school leaders on the topic of Catholic School Self-Evaluation: Five International Challenges. Professor Grace’s keynote address was, in many ways, prophetic, both in terms of what he was proposing and in terms of the challenges he was posing for the CEIST (and Catholic) schools. I want to contextualise his proposals in the light of changes in the Irish education landscape over the past five years and outline the perspicacity of his challenges. This chapter is written from the practitioner perspective as an acknowledgement to Gerald Grace for how his research is invaluable to practice in Catholic schools.