The toughest job in education? Susie Hall doesn't think so. She's just taken up the presidency of the ASTI and is determined to improve the teaching union's public image, writes Louise Holden.

In 1971 Susie Hall was dismissed from her first job, as a French teacher in Loreto Foxrock in Dublin. In her anger at the injustice of it all, she went straight to the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland. Thirty-three years later she was elected its president.

"I was forced out of my first job because I chose to get married. Male teachers with the same qualifications and skills as I had were being congratulated for getting married, while I was shown the door." Two years later the Civil Service marriage ban for women was lifted, but by then Susie had a new job at Malahide Community School and a newfound interest in labour relations. "People tend to take an interest in their unions during periods of adversity," Hall concedes.

This month Hall assumed leadership of an organisation that has just come through one of the most bitterly adversarial episodes in its 95-year history. Unions are accustomed to a good fight, but the ASTI has had to contend with four years of in-fighting and stratified division that last year prompted staff at ASTI head office to describe the atmosphere at the union as "intolerable".

The ASTI's 2003 pay campaign was a public relations disaster that soured dealings with the Government, estranged the public and bewildered many of the union's own members. The challenge for the new president will be to divert public attention from top-level wrangling and back to the needs of the grassroots. Hall maintains that the healing has already begun.

"Tension at union head office has eased - the atmosphere is now calm and positive," she says. "I want the focus returned to our members - the teachers. I want to see education and teaching given a higher profile. We used to give a high priority to learning and education, but we seem to have lost that vision. Wealth does not suit us."

In 1971, when the country was poor, money for education was made available at any cost, Hall remembers. "Thirty years ago we had nothing, but we knew what was important. We had pupil-teacher ratios of 15 to one in those days. Now it's twice that."

Class sizes haunt the new president and she has made the issue her central theme. "If we could reduce class sizes in this country it would go a long way towards addressing a whole range of everyday problems in our schools: indiscipline, special education needs, teachers' stress." Hall will be pressing this point upon the Minister for Education, whoever that might be.

The last few years have been punctuated by bouts of rancour between the ASTI and the current Minister for Education, Noel Dempsey, although Hall insists that she will not let personalities get in the way of her relationship with the Department of Education. Hall will not be drawn on her own hopes for next week's Cabinet reshuffle, but she's clear about what she wants from a Minister for Education.

"I hope to see a minister who will take pride in our education service and who will be a little more appreciative of what teachers do," says Hall, who admits that Dempsey was "not best pleased" with her union during last year's pay campaign.

She warns, however, that the fight for better pay is not over.

"We have still not received the recognition that we deserve. The teaching profession has reached a stage comparable with nursing a few years ago. We had a wonderful group of nurses in our hospitals and we treated them so badly that they left. It's happening in teaching already. Men are not entering the profession because they do not see it as financially worthwhile. Subjects such as metalwork and woodwork will start to drop from the curriculum. Sports training will be seriously affected. Young men need to have role models other than pop stars and footballers. Many male pupils are coming from homes where there is no male role model."

The new president has an apocalyptic vision of the future if conditions for teachers do not improve. "The public is well aware of the problems on our streets and in our courts. Schools are no different. Consider the enormous changes that have happened in schools in the last 30 years - new subjects, Transition Year, the Leaving Cert Applied, the broad programme of educational innovation that teachers have spearheaded. All of this has happened against a backdrop of decreased funding and growing class sizes. The system can only bend and flex so much. If class sizes are not addressed our excellent education service could collapse."

Hall aspires to work with a minister who thinks like a headmaster. "You would never hear the principal of a school publicly criticising his teachers," she explains." [Noel Dempsey] doesn't realise that by failing to openly support teachers he is sending the wrong message to young people."

A French and German teacher for over 30 years, Hall is impatient with Department initiatives that she sees as window dressing. She has little time for talk of reforming the Leaving Certificate. "I am implacably opposed to the notion of continuous assessment of students by teachers," she says firmly. "The Leaving Certificate is the one area of Irish life that is totally incorruptible. Imagine the pressures that teachers would come under if they had to assess their own students for certification?" And if continuous assessment was carried out by an external agency? "It would be a huge disruption of the school year," she contends.

One of the most important jobs for senior union executives at the ASTI this year will be to mend the damage done to their public image over recent years. Hall is no stranger to public relations - she is married to one of the country's best-known PR men, Don Hall. She claims that putting a good spin on things will come easily.

"I love teaching. I find it very easy to be positive about teaching. I want an improved relationship with the media and I look forward to building that."

As ASTI vice-president during dark days at the union, Susie Hall was in the eye of the storm. Privately, she was going through her own battle with cancer. Why is she taking on this presidency after such a tumultuous period in her life?

"My illness has not impacted on my career aspirations at all. I enjoy life more than ever. I was diagnosed with cancer 10 years ago, and since then I have bought a motorbike and travelled the world. The new job will curb my freedom to travel, but I'm ready to take on the challenge."

She doesn't lack energy - Hall attended every single one of the 17 Your Education System (YES) meetings and came away with a clear vision of where she wants to push the education agenda during the term of her presidency. If she turns up at the minister's office on her BMW 850, clad in leather and steel-toed boots, he'll know Hall means business.

ASTI president Susie Hall on. . .

Union disputes: "The tension at union head office has eased - the atmosphere is now calm and positive."

On Noel Dempsey: "A Minister for Education should think like a headmaster. You would never hear the principal of a school publicly criticising his teachers."

On reforming the Leaving Cert: "The Leaving Cert is as old as the State. People have been doing it for years and none of us is traumatised by the experience."

On school discipline: "There are two kinds of disruptive student. There are those with diagnosed behavioural problems and those who are just not interested in learning. The law has gone too far in defending the rights of the disruptive student."

On teachers' pay claims: "It's hurtful now to find that teachers' efforts are no longer valued. There is more respect paid to professionals who set outrageous prices on their time."