School indiscipline worries teachers more than pay issues, says union

TACKLING unruly behaviour and indiscipline at school is now more important to teachers than pay issues, the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) said yesterday.

“It is almost certainly the single most important issue besetting our members,” said TUI assistant general secretary, Declan Glynn.

“Pay has taken a second place to the difficulty of dealing with insidious, low-level indiscipline,” he said.

Today the 13,000-strong secondary school teachers’ union will hold a conference on school discipline in Dublin, with contributions from teachers, students and educationalists.

Earlier this year, the TUI called for a commission on discipline. While the teachers’ union accepts there is no pre-packaged remedy to the growing problem, they are insisting that the formulation of a code of behaviour should be a priority in every school.

Mr Glynn said boards of management were obliged to have an appropriate code in respect of students registered in the school but, regrettably, one was not always in place.

The last analysis of indiscipline conducted by the Department of Education and Science in 1997 found that one in five schools were in the grip of indiscipline.

One of the problems in Ireland is that, unlike other countries, there is no baseline statistical evidence available on the frequency or the severity of incidents of indiscipline in schools.

Mr Glynn said the commission on school discipline could examine strategies to deal with indiscipline and examine the role of other agencies in improving discipline.

In particular, schools needed both internal and external supports and interventions to tackle the problem.

In other countries, including Britain and the US, there were multi-disciplinary support teams working with the local education authorities.

Other countries also had short-stay and permanent referral units outside the school system. “The trouble in Ireland is that we always return our thinking to the unsavoury experience of the borstals and the Magdalene Laundries. Our thinking should not be driven like that,” said Mr Glynn.”

There were children who could not be catered for within the conventional education system and their needs were inadequately met. They needed specialist services and a multidisciplinary approach to their needs.

Education and Science Minister, Mary Hanafin, is currently examining the TUI’s commission proposal.

And, said Mr Glynn, unlike her predecessor, Minister Hanafin appeared to be convinced that indiscipline was a problem that needed to be tackled.