One young female teacher made a "cry for help" at yesterday's opening session of the ASTI conference in Ennis.
In a trembling voice 27-year-old Eveline Holdrick described "hourly verbal abuse" and regular physical abuse "or worse" in her school which she categorised as "100 per cent disadvantaged".
"I put out fires, I break up fights and I handle irate students and parents on my own," she told delegates. "I spend hours writing incident reports and they are all filed. I don't want more reports. I want immediate change, from next Monday, nine o'clock."
Ms Holdrick was the last in a long line of speakers who described a system under severe pressure. The recommendations of the task force on student behaviour were roundly condemned at yesterday's opening session in the West County Hotel.
On foot of the recommendations from the task force, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin has committed €2 million to a pilot scheme that will see student behaviour support teams dispatched to 50 volunteer schools.
Some 30 schools will be offered behaviour support in classrooms. Unions have complained that schools will be unlikely to come forward for the pilot phase, as volunteering will amount to an admission of defeat.
"We have very little confidence in pilot schemes which will encourage more silence, encourage us to go back into our burrows," said delegate Oliver McGoldrick.
He claimed that coming forward to apply for a student behaviour support team was like "handing open enrolment to the grind school down the road".
Other speakers at yesterday's session attacked the representation on the task force, claiming that the absence of teachers' union members or parents' groups displayed "a lack of respect". Susie Hall, former ASTI president, expressed "serious disappointment" at the recommendations of the task force and the suggestion by the Minister that the problems only affected a small number of schools. "Problems like the incontinent use of foul language are a problem in all schools," she insisted.
Ms Hall also said the measure to call on schools to volunteer for discipline support would drive the problem underground.
As soon as calls are made for volunteers, "the problem will be solved overnight. Not a school in the country will have a problem with discipline. A principal would have to be at his wits' end to apply for support, especially where a school is under pressure for numbers," said Ms Hall.
Few delegates had kind words for the Minister. Yesterday's speakers accused her of underplaying the discipline problem and under-resourcing measures to address it.
One delegate pointed to a causal relationship between the rise of grind schools and indiscipline. She claimed that many motivated students were "quietly voting with their feet" and leaving disrupted classrooms in fifth and sixth years.
Section 29 of the Education Act, which empowers students and their parents to appeal expulsions, was identified as a critical problem for many boards of management. Former president and controversial delegate Bernadine O'Sullivan called on the Minister to "repeal Section 29 immediately" as a first step in tackling indiscipline in schools.
