It's not every day that a cabinet minister has an opportunity to change the course of a country's development through the daring use of his limited executive powers. It is even more unusual for a Minister for Education to make such a move.

With the honourable exception of Donogh O'Malley in the 1960s - and to a lesser degree Gemma Hussey, Mary O'Rourke and Niamh Bhreathnach - Irish education ministers have been a conservative and timid lot, and for much of the nearly 80 years since the foundation of this State, educational reform has proceeded at a snail's pace.

One startling statistic illustrates this: in 1945, a year after the British parliament brought in universal free secondary education, only 41 per cent of 14- to 16-year-olds and 12 per cent of 16- to 18-year-olds were in full-time education in this State. It took another quarter of a century for free, and as a result mass, second-level education to arrive.

In his two years in office Micheal Martin, buoyed by bulging Government coffers and the support of the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, has already emerged as a Minister with a taste for reform and a detailed shopping list to go with it. As a former secondary teacher, his relish for the task is palpable.

Most of his successes have been down to his ability to come out ahead of his Cabinet colleagues in the annual estimates horse-trading. Cleverly echoing the arguments of business and industry about the need for more and more education in a "knowledge economy" suffering from serious skills shortages, he has persuaded the Government to treat his area as an investment rather than a spending portfolio like health or social welfare. The £280 million Education Technology Investment Fund, to bring information technology into education at all levels, is the best example of this.

His first bold move as an educational reformer came last year, when he surprised the teachers' unions by pushing through a measure to allow Leaving Certificate students to inspect their marked papers, a European "first" whose successful implementation is being studied in Britain and elsewhere.

This autumn he will have a rare opportunity to leave his stamp on the Irish education system for decades. At least four significant reviews and reforms of different levels of the system are due for publication or announcement.

The first is the Points Commission report. Its chairwoman, Prof Aine Hyland of UCC, is known to have some strong views about the need for alternatives to the Leaving Certificate, and for the need to assess other artistic and problem-solving "intelligences" as well as the narrow academic ones.

The commission's more radical ideas will probably not be taken up by the Minister in his efforts to persuade the universities and colleges, the points system's owners, to reform it.

However, other ideas certainly will: for example, the Higher Education Authority's proposal that the small group of "elite" courses in medicine-related subjects and law should not be allowed to distort so much second-level education by their absurdly high points requirements. UCD's common first year for many specialised subjects is likely to become the model rather than TCD's preference for direct entry from school.

The second development is the review of the Junior Certificate and its assessment. Mr Martin let slip last month that he is preparing a discussion document on this issue for the early autumn. He believes there are not enough external examiners available to continue the unique dependence on a written, terminal exam at the end of the junior cycle of second-level schooling.

Secondary teachers, particularly those in the ASTI, who have fiercely resisted suggestions that Ireland should fall into line with international practice by having more flexible, school-based assessment for 12 to 15-year-olds will be feeling very nervous at what this document might contain.

They know the Minister, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and senior advisers like Prof John Coolahan are all agreed that with unprecedented amounts of public money pouring into their sector, the issue of teacher accountability is going to move up the educational agenda.

"It's just not tenable that they should be the one unaccountable profession in the country," said one senior official this week. One area where they could be proactive is in beginning to assess their own junior cycle students.

The same fears affect teachers' opposition to new forms of school inspection, the so-called Whole School Evaluation with the resistance this time being led by the TUI's members. The report of the first WSE pilot scheme, concentrating on making schools broadly effective, rather than narrowly on teacher performance, is due out about now.

Under a dextrous and highly regarded chief inspector, Eamon Stack, there will be no moves towards crude "league table" school comparisons, but rather a careful attempt to assist schools with academic and morale problems by a mix of better school planning, curriculum choice, teacher interaction, discipline policy and parent and pupil liaison.

Senior officials have been impressed by recent research done by Dr Emer Smyth of the ESRI which indicates that schools with the same resources and types of children vary considerably in the success of their outcomes.

"Whole School" development planning is an area emphasised by Dr Smyth, and the Department of Education's first-ever guidelines for such planning are going to all schools this month and next. Other moves planned are the devolution of more of the Department's traditionally centralised powers to semi-independent executive agencies.

Despite all the increases in funding, school management bodies and teacher unions have kept up their demands for greatly increased resources. Mr Martin has signalled that he is working on plans for a major programme to tackle disadvantage at all levels in the educational system, to be announced in the autumn.

This week's revelation that he wants to give up to £200,000 to individual schools to "take the lead" in tackling early school-leaving in ways best suited to their particular circumstances indicates the direction of his thinking.

The Minister will need all his boldness and steel to take on the powerful teacher unions on long-overdue reforms like junior cycle assessment and school inspection. If he wants to be remembered as a reforming Minister, and show his mettle as a possible Taoiseach - and the indications are he wants both - the months ahead could prove the formative test of his political life.