Call for ‘serious talks’ to end schools disruption

TEACHER unions should get down to serious talks on the Croke Park deal and end disruption in schools, a second-level principals’ leader has said.

As the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) continues its negotiations with the Department of Education, their counterparts in the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) remain on industrial action in more than 250 schools and have not engaged in talks on the reforms in the public service pay programme.

National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals president Tim Geraghty said the difference of approach by the two unions is unfortunate and will lead to tensions between staff in around 80 schools where both ASTI and TUI members work.

He welcomed the ASTI’s decision to enter negotiations on implementing the deal and the suspension of industrial action.

“For principals and deputy principals up and down the country, it is vital that the outcome of deliberations between the department and the unions is clear and unambiguous.

“The day-to-day impact of poorly thought-out procedures has led to mind-boggling and needless complexity in administering schools,” Mr Geraghty told the association’s annual conference in Galway.

The requirements from teachers in the Croke Park deal that are yet to be finalised include an hour’s extra non-teaching work on school planning and other activities and a review of teacher contracts which is likely to focus on schools delivering the full 183 days at primary and 165 days of the school year at second level.

However, TUI members are still engaged in action at vocational schools and in some community and comprehensive schools, the most controversial relating to non-flexibility in carrying out middle management roles.

Mr Geraghty said this is adding to the difficulties caused by the public service moratorium, which means principals and their deputies have to take on extra duties where posts cannot be filled when staff retire. While Education Minister Mary Coughlan has said there can be no return to a situation where most teachers have a post of responsibility that pays additional allowances, Mr Geraghty said schools cannot operate without a middle-management structure.

The conference also heard from Department of Education chief inspector Harold Hislop that questionnaires for parents and students in trials of a revised school evaluation scheme reveal four-in-five parents believe teaching is good in their children’s schools, although only half of parents at one school thought so.