School complaints - Concerns of parents need to be heard

Given the focus on bullying in recent years, it is unbelievable that despite a government promise to involve parents in complaints procedures relating to teachers, they are still waiting, 15 years later.

Along with a plethora of other political pledges, the proposed legislation has been gathering dust in the dark recesses of a ministerial department.

As today’s report shows, frustrated parents find themselves up against a brick wall when they are worried about how teachers are treating their children. They also encounter a chronic lack of transparency when seeking to scrutinise a teacher’s performance in the classroom.

According to Children’s Ombudsman Emily Logan, a “significant proportion” of its annual complaints concern the handling of parents’ complaints by schools and “inappropriate behaviour” by members of staff. Putting this in sharp perspective, the National Parents Council reports that 16% of bullying complaints involve teachers while a further 6% of complaints relate to alleged bullying by the school principal.

Under Section 28 of the Education Act, a complaints process was envisaged in 1998 but is not yet in force. Effectively, when complaints are made, the parent’s voice is silenced, while teachers and management are heard. Similarly, the ombudsman can examine the complaints procedure but cannot scrutinise allegations of professional misconduct. This makes a mockery of transparency. Could it have anything to do with the preponderance of teachers in Dáil Éireann?

Parents have a right to be dissatisfied with the present scenario. No matter how big or small their concerns, they should never have been kept in the dark. They are entitled to swift and complete resolution of issues involving the schooling of their children. Parents deserve to be taken seriously and not fobbed off when justifiably demanding effective and see-through systems for assessing teachers.

Though departmental inspectors occasionally check a teacher’s overall performance, Ireland has no system for evaluating school staff on a regular basis. That makes it next to impossible to remove an incompetent teacher. Fortunately, the vast majority perform reasonably well in the difficult arena of the classroom, where the importance of a low teacher-pupil ratio has been sacrificed on the Government’s altar of austerity.

The problem is that while inept teachers may be the exception, they can resort to unacceptable tactics to conceal their deficiencies. If, for example, a child is lacking confidence or is a slow learner, they can be singled out as the butt of an incompetent teacher’s sarcasm or worse, with all that implies for the unwitting child. Children targeted in this manner end up being bullied by the very person their parents trust to care for them.

The recent suggestion by Education Minister Ruairi Quinn that parents should have a greater role in the running of schools deserves to be supported. Though it remains to be seen what future role they will get under the current review of Section 28, his commitment to a stronger culture of parental involvement in schools is indeed promising. The concept of annual reviews to show how teachers and principals are performing is constructive and sensible and deserves to be taken on board. The involvement of parents in school grievance procedures is long overdue and should be put in place without further delay. What parents want is political action — not empty promises.