Teachers incensed by Dempsey’s ‘spies’

IN reply to the letter from Education Minister Noel Dempsey (Irish Examiner, Dec 27), might I inform him that he has a lot in common with George W Bush. Firstly, the minister also misses the point.

All teachers were well aware that school finished on December 23. That was not what incensed them. It was the instructions given to inspectors to check and spy on schools that infuriated the teachers and possibly the inspectors.

Secondly, the inspectors, like Bush’s, found no missing weapons of mass instruction, but the minister’s hamfisted efforts, like Bush’s, have endangered existing relationships.

Thirdly, it was ironic that in the week in which the minister is reported as saying that some of our teaching methods belong to the hedge school era, a major report should confirm that our pupil/teacher ratio is the second worst in Europe.

Need I say more?

John Hurley,

Ferrybridge,

Clarina,

Co Limerick.