Union rejects teacher competency assessment proposals

PROPOSALS to have teacher competency assessed by school principals rather than inspectors have been firmly rejected by a union leader.

Tim O’Meara, president of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI), said it is natural and understandable that some teachers experience professional difficulties from time to time, just like workers in any other sector.

“However, TUI will accept nothing less than the involvement of independent professionals, in this case the Department of Education inspectorate, in assessing the competency of teachers,” he said.

“The real story, infrequently told unfortunately, is that the overwhelming majority of teachers do a quite wonderful job in our schools on a daily basis, often in trying circumstances and lacking adequate support,” he said in an article for TUI News magazine.

The proposal by the Department of Education to have principals take a lead role in assessing the work of their staff is being discussed with teacher unions and school managers arising from the Towards 2016 social partnership deal. It is one of a number of conditions on which pay rises and benchmarking awards are being made to teachers, along with further commitments, and agreement was to have been reached by the start of the current school year two months ago.

The existing procedures give school boards responsibility for disciplinary issues with teachers but the inspectorate has been in charge of monitoring teaching competence, but these arrangements are now being reviewed.

“The recent leak regarding confidential discussions at the Teachers’ Conciliation Council gave the media the opportunity to waste further ink on the offensive concept of the ‘underachieving teacher’. Such sweeping generalisations say little about the challenges that face teachers from day to day,” said Mr O’Meara.

The section of the Towards 2016 agreement setting out the context for these talks makes specific reference to the issue, with a passage stating that the teacher unions, school managers and other parties “acknowledge that there are, as in all professions, a small number of under-performing personnel in schools”.

“If they have any shame, the latest OECD Education at a Glance report will make uncomfortable reading for our policy makers, which shows that Ireland is joint last out of 30 countries in a list of annual spend per second level student relative to national income per head of population, along with Mexico, Greece and the Slovak Republic,” he said.