Quinn plays on despite red card reception
Barely finished his birthday breakfast on Leeside, instead of presents wrapped in red bows, the minister was shown a volley of red cards from at least half the 800 angry teachers and principals in the room.
While none exited the congress hall during his half-hour address, it was easily the least courteous reception accorded to the Labour minister in his three Easter vigils to date with the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation.
The heckling grew louder and he raised more chuckles and groans with every mention of trust, outcomes and other buzzwords littered throughout his speech. It took INTO president Anne Fay’s intervention, a quarter of an hour in, for the room to listen and delegates were, for the most part, well behaved for the remaining 16 minutes.
A notable exception arrived when he raised the question of school self-evaluation which principals and teachers believe is more focused on paperwork than education. The very mention of the topic prompted half of the teachers in the room to hold aloft their red cards, put together with a list of cuts to their pay and to their schools’ budgets.
All very impressive for reminding teachers of their sacrifices, if it weren’t for an unfortunate typo on the heading: “HOLD UP THE RED CAR TO THE MINISTER”. A bit of last-minute inserting added the missing D, appropriate for the grading teachers wanted to give Mr Quinn and his government.
But if he hadn’t yet reached fail-point in terms of audience appeal at that stage, however, he soon did so when addressing them as “comrades in education”.
“How dare you?” bellowed one male teacher.
“We’re not your comrades,” a female delegate shouted.
The minister deserved credit for making his way through a 12-page speech that even managed some polite, if muted, applause at one point. It followed his announcement of government support for legal changes proposed by Labour backbenchers that would see an end to the right of schools and other religious employers to fire gay teachers to uphold their ethos.
The earlier jeering turned to cheering when INTO general secretary Ms Nunan reminded Mr Quinn of the topics raised anger during congress: Threats to their pay, slashed school budgets and mounting workloads.
“Primary teachers turn below-average investment in education into well above average outcomes for children every day,” she said.
Ms Nunan drew standing applause by saying the minister needs to be aware of the depth of anger, the depth of hurt and the depth of frustration in the room and the 32,000 INTO members they represent.
Asked later how he felt about the reception, Mr Quinn managed a smile: “I’ve had far worse Labour Party conferences.”
