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Breaking stories
Institutes’ rush to secure university status ‘could do more damage than good’
By Niall Murray, Education Correspondent
The rush to secure university status could do more damage than good to some institutes of technology, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland congress heard.
In his first address as general secretary, John MacGabhann said it was by no means clear that technological university status would be appropriate for all the institutes of technology.Four groupings that include all but one of the institutes have announced plans to apply to become a tech university, with the standards and the process published earlier this year.
TUI represents more than 4,000 institute of technology lecturers but Mr MacGabhann expressed concern that moving towards university status is being held forth as the glittering prize.
In some cases, he said, it revealed a lack of institutional self-confidence by the college presidents.
“It is not good enough to make a second-rate university of a first-rate institute. It would not serve the students, the region, the economy or our society,” he said.
Higher Education Authority figures published by the Irish Examiner last month revealed that all four groupings hoping to become a tech university fell well short of the qualifications standards needed among their academic staff.
Mr MacGabhann also said problems with how extra hours were delivered under the Croke Park Agreement could lead to teachers withdrawing from voluntary work in schools and colleges.
“This sterile attitude, far from yielding increasedproductivity, may yield diminished activity of real value, if teachers choose to withdraw from even a small part of that which they have done on a goodwill basis,” he said.
TUI deputy general secretary Annette Dolan said difficulties for the union’s 200 members working in the prison education service were a case in point.
The TUI had proposed the 33 hours of extra work a year they must do under the pay agreement be carried out during the two-hour lockdown for prisoners each day.
But Ms Dolan said the Department of Education and VECs, which employed teachers in about 15 prisons and detention centres, had turned down the proposal that curricular planning and other additional work be done in this time.
“The department told us it has to be the same as in second level schools, after normal hours. It’s bureaucracy gone mad, there’s no understanding of how prisons operate, with the security and other conditions under which staff there must work,” she said.
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