Teachers afraid to expel students

SCHOOLS are afraid to expel disruptive students because they fear they will be re-instated on appeal, according to vocational teachers.

The Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) said the balance of power had swung to the student, who now has the right to appeal to the board of management and to the Children's Ombudsman.

With one in two appeals brought under the 1998 Education Act succeeding, schools were fearful of expelling students and then having their disciplinary structure undermined.

"We believe the balance of rights that lies at the heart of the education system has been upset by an excessive concern with the individual student at the expense of the student body, and at the expense of the individual teacher," said TUI president Derek Dunne.

Tommy Glynn, the principal of Coláiste Cholmcille in Inverin, Co Galway, said discipline in schools had worsened. The most recent survey, a 1997 Department of Education report, found that one in five schools had serious discipline problems.

"There has been a breakdown in family and society and schools are bearing the brunt of that, said Mr Glynn.

The TUI will launch a paper on school discipline today, calling for all vocational schools to draw up codes of behaviour in consultation with parents and students.

"The indiscipline of a minority of students interferes with the rights of a majority to achieve its potential. All the partners in the school community students, parents, teachers and management should actively collaborate and reach a consensus on school policy on discipline," it says.

The report states all schools are supposed to have codes of behaviour but the TUI believes many have not yet acted.

It says disruptive students should not be transferred from one school to another. The alternatives include withdrawal from school, home-based learning, intensive counselling or securing a training placement.

The paper rejects the assertion that poor teaching skills are part of the problem.

"It is facile in an education system, where resources are patchy, piecemeal and paltry, to assume that disruptive student behaviour is reflective of students' misbehaviour," it says.