INTO holds crunch meeting on inspection reports
About 600 Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) members will be updated on progress in the situation at a consultative conference in Dublin. The union’s annual congress delegates ordered the central executive committee in April to direct its 26,700 members not to co-operate with whole school evaluations (WSEs) by department inspectors. That directive has not yet been issued.
The INTO’s main concern is about the plan to put WSE reports on the Department of Education website, as staff in small schools may be identifiable.
A number of difficulties face the INTO in its deliberations.
The most obvious barrier to issuing the directive is that it could be an effective order to break the law. Under the 1998 Education Act, teachers must give department inspector every reasonable co-operation.
The other difficulty facing members is the likely withholding of the final 2.5% pay rise due under the Sustaining Progress social partnership deal. Among the conditions attached to teachers’ increases is co-operation with ongoing change and modernisation.
Education Minister Mary Hanafin has already indicated her belief that any directive not to co-operate with inspectors would breach this condition and put at risk the final payment, which fell due on June 1.
However, the question of whether this will be payable if no such directive has been issued will be a matter for the Education Sector Performance Verification Group, which is due to meet later this month.
But even if the INTO was in compliance up to the lapse of Sustaining Progress on June 30, similar co-operation conditions are attached to the Towards 2016 social partnership agreement finalised this week.
A possible solution to teachers’ concerns could be the agreement of an acceptable complaints procedure for those who are unhappy with an inspectors’ report on them or their school.
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