Unions oppose publication of reports
The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) decided on Wednesday that members should not co-operate with whole school evaluation (WSE), which is likely to lead to a hold on their 2.5% pay increase due on June 1 under Sustaining Progress.
Education Minister Mary Hanafin made clear her interpretation that this would be seen as industrial action and, therefore, as a breach of partnership. She said this would be very serious in the whole industrial relations process.
The publication issue was also discussed at the Association of Secondary Teachers’ Ireland (ASTI) and Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) conferences yesterday.
ASTI delegates instructed the leadership that a report on the effects of WSE on schools, teachers and the education system should be presented to annual convention each year.
Many delegates expressed the same concern as the INTO that WSE reports would not contain any safeguards to ensure that individual teachers are not identified. They said it would be impossible in a school where there are just one or two teachers for particular subjects.
Former ASTI president Bernadine O’Sullivan said reports would be used to conceal the problems in the education system rather than inform parents.
“What’s being concealed by the publication is the lack of resources in our schools. They are not telling the parents the full story, which is that compared to any other European country we are grossly under-resourced,” she said.
An emergency motion at the TUI congress in Tralee also rejected Ms Hanafin’s decision, first announced last May, to publish school inspection reports. Val O’Brien from Co Kildare, proposing the motion, said it was something the minister had brought in ahead of league tables while insisting they could not be compiled as a result of publication.
“The INTO have already passed this motion after condemning inspection reports, but this is a very important issue because they will identify individual teachers in schools no matter what they say,” he said.
“In any small school, there’s only one teacher teaching one subject area and when that subject is criticised, it immediately criticises that teacher.
“We never signed up for that, we never agreed to that,” Mr O’Brien said.
The detail of how INTO will direct members on not co-operating with WSE inspections is unlikely to be considered by the union’s central executive until its next meeting on May 11. However, it is possible that a directive might not issue until the legal position is clarified, as the 1998 Education Act legally obliges school boards and staff to accord every reasonable co-operation to inspectors.
