Schools ‘selective in enrolment of troublesome pupils’

SOME schools are adopting selective enrolment policies to allow them dump troublesome students on public sector schools, a teachers’ leader has claimed.

Declan Glynn, assistant general secretary of the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI), said this was adding to the stress-related illnesses being suffered by staff of vocational schools and other members of the union.

“The nature of our school system is such that public sector schools are invariably dumped with more problem students than other types of schools because of selective enrolment procedures,” he said. “Correspondingly, this is more of an issue for TUI second level teachers, all of whom work in public sector schools.”

Around 400 of the country’s 740 second level schools operate outside the public sector, run mostly by or for the religious orders. Most TUI second level members work in the other sectors, and make up most staff in vocational schools and community colleges. Among the chief concerns raised by teacher unions and management bodies around the discipline issue have been the legal difficulties met trying to dismiss or expel disruptive students.

Education Minister Mary Hanafin has promised to review the section of the Education Act which allows appeals against schools in these cases, if it is recommended by a Task Force on Discipline she set up last year. A series of measures to deal with behavioural problems will be announced soon by the minister, but she will not publish the report of the task force, chaired by NUI Maynooth’s Dr Maeve Martin, before then.

Mr Glynn was concerned that the group may have underestimated the extent of the problems experienced in classrooms every day.

“The indiscipline we refer to includes physical violence and verbal abuse, including comments of a sexual nature,” he said.

“We have been told of stones thrown at teachers on school grounds and their cars being maliciously damaged by students.”

“One of the more distressing regularly reported incidents is the bullying of students who wish to learn,” Mr Glynn told a meeting of second level branch chairpersons. Mr Glynn said the union has figures to show more teachers leave the profession on ill health through stress, much of it caused by student behaviour, than from cancer.

As well as legislative changes in relation to appeals, the TUI is seeking the establishment of referral units to which disruptive students can be withdrawn but where they can continue learning outside the traditional classroom environment.