Rose Tully is an inspirational lady. This woman has taken more courses and career changes than most mothers, and she's not finished yet. She's now taking her umpteenth part-time course as well as steering herself through a return to full time education.

Rose is familiar to many parents as the President of the National Parents Council. From Borrisokane in County Tipperary. Rose was widowed a number of years ago but since this sad period in her life, she's left her national school teaching job to work in the voluntary sector and to do some more learning.

The National Parents Council was inaugurated on the 8th June, 1985 by then education minister, Gemma Hussey. The Council, promised the minister, would get the same rights to consultation as the Management and Teachers unions. An association representing all parents associations in post-primary schools in Ireland, the Council describes its role as "the promotion and protection of the role of the parent as the primary educator of his/her children."

Essentially, the National Parents Council is about involving parents actively in all aspects of the education of their children. It's also about giving parents a voice in the development of the national education system.

Importantly, the Council runs a Leaving Cert Results Helpline every August in association with Institute of Guidance Counsellors. It also publishes the very recommendable National Parents Council Year Book, a mine of information and advice to parents.

The ongoing strike strife between teachers and the Government is keeping Rose unusually busy. Her organisation is thinking about the effect on students and their parents of course, so she's effectively caught dead in the middle of it all.

But while she deals with media quizzing and dispenses advice to the nation's parents, Rose is also taking an M Sc in Education Management at Trinity College. It will take her two years to complete and while she's there she'll commute to Dublin from her Tipperary home. "It took a little bit of adjustment, but it's so worthwhile", says Rose, who says she's finding it hard to find enough time for the reading and revision involved in her course work. But she's not looking back: "I'd recommend it to any adult", she adds, saying that "more and more adults are finding that education is a never ending process."

Anyone with a notion to do so should take an evening course says Rose. "It's so healthy that children going to school should see their parents or even their grandparents taking their Leaving Cert now or going to classes and continuing the learning process", Rose told Nightcourses.com this week.

The National Parents Council can be contacted at: Marino Institute of Education, Griffith Avenue, Dublin 9. Tel: 01 857 0522 Fax: 01 837 5137