The secondary teachers' union has stumbled into a dispute over supervision and substitution that threatens to alter fundamentally the jobs its members do, and may also prove to be another setback in the pay campaign. Sean Flynn, Education Editor, reports

A kind of revolution took place in Irish secondary schools yesterday. For the first time, parents and other non-teachers were paid to perform supervision and substitution duties in the classroom and the school yard.

The ASTI ban on supervision meant that the school managers were left with no other choice. Although signalled well in advance, the renewed disruption in our schools will have jolted parents and students. Even the casual observer knew that ASTI suffered a bruising defeat in their pay campaign with the Government last year. So how come the union is back on the warpath?

A little more than two months ago, morale within the ASTI was on the floor. The union's pay campaign had collapsed in defeat, bitterness and recrimination. The grassroots - 12,000 of whom once marched on the Dáil to support the 30 per cent pay claim - had also drifted away. Fewer than one-quarter of the ASTI membership bothered to vote in a ballot on a proposed withdrawal from Department of Education programmes in January.

A comprehensive survey of members taken before Christmas underlined how the grassroots had grown battle-weary. More than 70 per cent of those surveyed backed co-operation with the benchmarking pay review, where the other teaching unions are pursuing their pay claim. Astir, ASTI's monthly journal, summed up the mood of the survey: members, it said, favoured non-disruptive action, withdrawal from co-operation with the Department, lobbying of TDs - that sort of thing. After firing the big guns in the pay dispute, ASTI was now ready to confine itself to small-arms fire.

Or so it seemed. But one unresolved issue from the pay campaign - payment for supervision/substitution duties - was to transform the picture, and lead to yesterday's events.

Supervision has been a long-running sore in Irish education. For a generation, schools have relied on teachers to perform these duties on a voluntary "nod and wink" basis, without payment. Teachers would be gently - and sometimes not so gently - cajoled by management to do supervision. With the flight of the religious from the staffroom, the dependence on teachers for supervision had increased.

The whole situation was shambolic. Effective supervision is an essential part of the life of the school. But the teachers who perform this duty are not paid a cent.

When the Department tabled an offer of €34 per hour for supervision, the resentment about the issue increased. While the rate of pay was reasonable, the Government's failure to make this payment pensionable was widely criticised. But the ASTI grassroots hardly seemed very exercised about the issue: only 52 per cent of them bothered to vote on it in last month's ballot.

Those who did vote obeyed the instructions of the executive and rejected the offer. It was also rejected in a separate ballot by members of the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI).

The different tactics employed by the TUI and the ASTI since their members rejected the supervision offer tells us much about both unions. Whereas the TUI was content to seek a negotiated solution in talks with the Department, the hardliners in the ASTI - those who pushed the hard line on pay last year - again took control of their union's agenda.

The general secretary, Charlie Lennon, and union president Catherine Fitzpatrick may have been anxious to lower the temperature.

But the hardliners were having none of it. Many of them say the supervision issue as the perfect opportunity to give the Government some stick - and, in the process, settle some old scores from the pay campaign. The union's executive voted to impose a ban on supervision from yesterday. It was slow to re-enter talks and last week's discussions on the issue broke down.

It is difficult to assess the level of support among ordinary teachers for the action which began yesterday. Fewer than 38 per cent of ASTI's total membership voted to reject the supervision offer but this was enough to provoke the current crisis. Meanwhile, the endorsement by the vast majority of members for co-operation with benchmarking and an end to disruption continues to be ignored.

Ostensibly, ASTI is a very democratic organisation. It huge 180-member executive - three from every branch - should keep it close to the grassroots. But the anger expressed by some members to head office about the pay campaign and the low turnout in ballots suggests otherwise. Attendance at branch meetings is also very poor. One senior ASTI member tells of one 300-member branch where fewer than 20 regulars attend branch meetings and dominate the agenda. The chasm between ordinary members and the head office in Dublin has never been wider, he says.

The apathy among waves of ordinary teachers has allowed a relatively small group, in numerical terms, to set the agenda. This group of hardliners are at war - not just with the Government but also with the ASTI leadership of Lennon and Fitzpatrick. Anonymous documents criticising their leadership have been circulated. Votes of no-confidence against the leadership have been adopted by at least 15 ASTI branches.

A VIRTUAL civil war is now under way in ASTI between those who want to continue the war of attrition with the Government and those who want to return to what one former union president, Pierce Purcell, has called "mainstream trade union activity".

The hardliners believe they are fighting for the future of the Irish education system. They are fighting to see off the imposition of a Thatcherite influence on education on Irish education.

The moderates have another view. They see the hardliners as a wildcat group who have damaged the public standing of the union and that of the teaching profession.

The supervision issue is the latest theatre of war for the ASTI hardliners. ASTI may have a powerful case on supervision and the issue has been very poorly handled by the Minister for Education, Dr Woods.

But the union, once again, risks overplaying its hand. If there is no disruption, those teachers who want to supervise will lose out on at least €1,270 per year. They will also see non-teachers taking a role that many would still like to see reserved for teaching professionals.

If there is serious disruption over the coming days and weeks, it could well provoke a grassrooots rebellion against the union by ordinary members.

ASTI is engaged in another high-risk strategy and even the hardliners are unsure of their ground. Said one: "Here we are letting off steam over supervision, which is essentially a side issue, while Bertie and the boys slam the door on pay. I worry sometimes we might have got it all wrong."