Procedures to deal with under-performing teachers to be in place by September

TEACHERS who under-perform will be dealt with under procedures to be in place before the beginning of the next school year.

Education Minister Mary Hanafin said that under the plans, schools themselves will have to deal with teachers who have complaints made against them.

The measures were proposed in talks with teacher unions and school management bodies as part of a commitment in the Towards 2016 social partnership deal.

Speaking yesterday at the launch of new codes of practice for the profession, Ms Hanafin said: “We are working with the teachers’ unions to ensure that there are procedures put in place to deal with under-performing teachers; those procedures have to be put in place by September of this year. In the first instance I would advise parents who have any anxiety to work with the principal and the board of management.”

Several professional codes of practice, including quality of teaching, professional development and social inclusion were published by the Teaching Council yesterday.

Ms Hanafin said that while they are only guidelines and cannot be enforced, they will make a difference for pupils: “There are 55,000 teachers in this country who have a significant influence over all of the young people who are in our schools. So I think it’s very important that we would have a code based on values of respect, of working with others, of including parents in their child’s education and ensuring teachers themselves are professionally competent and are caring towards their students.”

The council has also launched a fresh campaign to attract more men to the profession. Ms Hanafin said there has been an increase of 25% in the number of males applying for teacher training courses this year. But she said more needs to be done to ensure teaching does not become a female-only profession.

However, Professor Sheelagh Drudy, head of education at University College Dublin, said she hasn’t seen any evidence to date of a negative impact on boys not having male teachers.

“Many people believe the need for male role models is important, but there’s little enough evidence to reach a definite conclusion on this,” she said at a conference hosted by Trinity College Dublin’s Gender Education Association, exploring the feminisation of teaching.