Teaching council - New forum could herald more reform

The efficacy of the fledgling Teaching Council will be severely tried and tested if it is to effect serious positive change in a sector which has been lamentably neglected for too long.

Yesterday, Education Minister Mary Hanafin launched the country’s first such body which will regulate standards and practices within the profession.

The council’s powers will include the application of sanctions in relation to professional misconduct, as well as advising the minister on teacher supply and demand.

She said the new body has the potential to secure and enhance the status of teaching in the eyes of people throughout Ireland. Hopefully, it will do more than that - and a teaching council with a predominance of teachers as members should.

Of the 37 seats on the council, 22 of them will be held by teachers, so it will be largely a self-policing body to which primary and post-primary teachers will have to be registered to be able to teach in a State school.

Because of its composition, the new council should be more than well aware of the ills that beset the country’s educational system: from a current lack of teachers, to large class sizes and poor school buildings all over the country, to mention just a few.

It has to be a major force in effecting changes for the better in the system, ones for which the various teacher unions have been lobbying for years.

Part of the council’s remit is to advise the minister in relation to supply and demand and it must be persistent in seeking change in this area for the benefit of pupils, as well as themselves.

Ireland has some of the largest class sizes in Europe and that is a situation that has pertained for decades, despite the emphasis successive governments have placed on education as a major factor in the country’s economic well-being.

From the teacher unemployment and emigration of the ’80s and ’90s, more teachers are now being trained at home, and combined with those qualifying abroad, there is the potential to rectify the imbalance in class sizes.

The Teaching Council has to address the problem of administrative barriers which deter people who are qualified abroad from teaching here.

For too long, teaching was a job perceived as being almost impossible to be dismissed from and, realistically, it was.

Despite the fact that the profession will dominate, the new council will have to address the issue of standards in the classroom adroitly and be prepared to take action where it is warranted.

Parent and management bodies, training colleges, as well as IBEC and the ICTU are also represented in the new forum which should be strident in the improvements which are glaringly obvious.

The establishment of the new council should auger well for the educational system in this country.