‘Less than 20 schools’ set to breach in-service training rules
This is technically in breach of the agreement signed between the Department of Education, the teachers’ union and the Catholic bishops, the minister said. The agreement states that in-service training days should not be held on the week day prior to and after a holiday.
The Catholic bishops insisted yesterday that they were just sticking to the agreement when they instructed their schools to close on the All Saints holy day - November 1. The agreement also provides for three holy days of obligation for Catholics in the school year and this is one of them. But Ms Hanafin said that 95% of schools will comply with the agreement, closing for one week mid-term after school on Friday, October 22.
Only a tiny minority of the country’s 3,000 primary schools will be involved in this in-service training because planning for the courses were at such and advanced stage that they could not be cancelled, the minister said.
The bishops were accused yesterday of vetoing teachers from attending in-service training course on November 1 and causing disruption to schools and parents who had already been informed about these courses. But the bishops said in a statement last night that they were conforming to the agreement on the standardisation of the school year signed by them, the department and the Irish National Teachers Association in March this year.
“The position of the Catholic bishops is clear - holy days of obligation are to be observed by schools under their patronage,” their statement added.
The bishops said they were concerned that this direction had not been observed in some instances for Monday November 1 - All Saints Day.
The bishops said they accepted that designating All Saints Day as an in-service training day was an oversight by a unit of the Department of Education.
But the INTO did not raise this issue during the negotiation of the standardised school year and the bishops said they were concerned the union seemed to be specifically targeting holy days as in-service training days.
INTO general secretary John Carr, however, rejected such claims. “The union simply brought the concerns of its members to the bishops’ attention and sought to solve a problem,” Mr Carr said.
The INTO requested that because of the confusion and late clarification of the issue that schools who had planned and circulated calendars should not be required to adjust them, he said.
