The Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) overwhelmingly voted in favour yesterday of a motion calling on Minister for Education Mary Hanafin to allow for the provision of behavioural support services in all second-level schools.
Delegates passed a motion which demands increased staffing of the service and the establishment of behavioural support classrooms in all schools. It also calls for additional staffing to be targeted at schools designated as disadvantaged.
The Minister introduced behavioural support services last year, but they have only been introduced in 50 schools. The service involves family support workers or additional teachers working with problematic students on a short-term basis to help reintegrate them back into a classroom.
Fergal McCarthy, the Co Cork representative on the TUI executive, said the failure to implement the findings of earlier reports on school discipline has had a negative impact on schools.
He said 124 schools had applied for behavioural support services, but resources were only made available for 50 schools.
Mr McCarthy added that research had shown that behavioural difficulties were more prevalent in areas of socio-economic depravation and that to properly address the problem, behavioural support centres should be put in place in every disadvantaged school.
The calls came in the wake of a recent survey by the TUI which found that one in 10 teachers had been physically attacked by a pupil and more than half had been submitted to verbal abuse. Seven per cent admitted to being sexually harassed in the classroom environment.
Some 44 per cent of teachers were left "quite stressed" or "completely stressed" by discipline among students and 51 per cent said it left them "quite drained" or "completely drained".
Declan Glynn, assistant general secretary of the TUI, said the Minister had done more than her recent predecessors on school discipline, but they were "modest interventions".
Mr Glynn said almost every secondary school in Scotland had a learning support centre and the Government's current commitment was "utterly modest and inadequate", representing just 6 per cent of the schools. He said rolling the scheme out on a small basis was "flying in the face" of "accepted educational thinking".
"In circumstances in which abusive and threatening behaviour is significantly under-reported . . . it is not good enough that the department and school employers have ignored our members' personal safety, security and well-being," he said.