Minister offers little consolation to teachers

ALTHOUGH Education Minister Noel Dempsey quoted John F Kennedy yesterday, his speech offered little to primary teachers except Winston Churchill’s “blood, toil, tears and sweat”.

In a clear rejection of the INTO’s demand for a €1.5 billion building fund, he said the Department of Education would adopt a “longer-term approach” to replacing dilapidated school facilities.

“It simply isn’t possible to meet all demands simultaneously,” he said.

Mr Dempsey praised teachers for creating “a first-class education system” but said it needed to improve constantly. He pledged more inspectors and a greater emphasis on in-service training for teachers.

“We can no longer make vital decisions on the basis of gut feeling or anecdotal evidence. We need high quality data, collected in external evaluations by educational professionals,” he said.

The sole concession for teachers was the announcement that there would be an extra year to implement the new primary school curriculum. However, Mr Dempsey said he did not believe teachers needed six planning days off to do this.

He acknowledged the need to review the system for special needs teachers, who often spend more time travelling between schools than in classrooms.

“There were very few resources for people with special needs in 1997 but you now have 4,500 special needs assistants and 2,500 resource teachers. That change happened so quickly, so obviously we need to focus those resources on where they’re most effective for the pupils,” he said.

The “plethora” of schemes for schools in disadvantaged areas will also be reviewed. Mr Dempsey said he was not convinced they were equally effective. “We have a huge number of co-ordinators and sometimes we nearly have to have co-ordinators for the co-ordinators,” he said.

Newly-elected INTO general secretary John Carr said: “If Minister Dempsey wants changes to the curriculum, to parent teacher meetings and to the school term, he must end the scourge of sub-standard schools.”

Mr Carr also criticised the heavy workloads for school principals and young teachers. “They are swamped in a tide of paperwork and unfair, unreasonable demands,” he said.