Union conferences: teachers to call for disciplinary steps and more staff

MEASURES to deal with misbehaviour, and more staff to help pupils with special needs, are among demands to be aired by second-level teachers at the annual union conferences next month.

The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) will debate a number of motions on behaviour, one of them calling for more Department of Education resources to provide behaviour support classrooms for dealing with problem pupils. These classes are being created in around 30 second-level schools by the National Behaviour Support Service set up after last year’s report by a task force on student behaviour.

The 500 delegates at the ASTI annual convention in Sligo will hear calls for more training and resources for teachers working with pupils who have special needs and international pupils who require extra help with English.

The increase in pupils with special education needs has prompted the introduction of individual education plans (IEPs), which schools will be legally required to provide for each special- needs pupil in around two years.

However, Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) members will be asked at its congress in Bundoran, Co Donegal, to back a motion that IEPs not be introduced until a less time-consuming method of drawing them up is agreed to. This mirrors a motion at the ASTI convention calling for training for teachers preparing the plans and for time allowances to do the work to be in place before IEPs become mandatory.

Both unions hold their conferences from April 10 to 12 — just weeks before the likely general election date of May 19. While the industrial relations front in schools is relatively calm from the Government’s perspective, there appears to be growing unease among teachers about national pay agreements.

The TUI executive committee will seek delegate backing for a campaign to overturn the trend in industrial relations which requires a substantial sacrifice of conditions of service by members in return for cost-of-living increases.

The union’s members voted against accepting the Towards 2016 social partnership deal, backed by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which requires changes by teachers in parent-teacher meetings, procedures for underperforming teachers and redeployment of surplus teachers.

The deal was also rejected by the ASTI, whose delegates will discuss a motion calling for renegotiation of the timing of parent-teacher meetings, which are partly held after school hours as a consequence of a deal struck under the last partnership deal, Sustaining Progress.