Teaching Matters: It's quite clear that when Taoiseach Bertie Ahern spoke recently about the role of the church in primary school management he mixed up the issues of control of schools and the management of schools. And in so doing he showed a total lack of understanding about how the modern primary school manages to keep going each day, Valerie Monaghan.

Yes there was a time when a local clergyman was the sole manager of a primary school. Yes there was a time when this conferred huge power on that individual and his church. Yes there was a time when that power was exercised strongly and on occasions unfairly. Today, the reality is quite different.

The churches may control all but a handful of the state's 3,200 primary schools, but they don't manage them and therefore their management role can hardly be described as "indispensable", which is what the Taoiseach did.

Primary schools today are managed by a board of management. The real question that should have exercised the Taoiseach about this is not whether the role of the church is "indispensable" in management but how do boards of management, as currently supported by his Government, function at all. These issues formed a large part of the recent INTO Principals' and Deputy Principals' Consultative Conference.

At that gathering two messages came across loud and clear - the current board of management structure is not working in most schools, and the reason for that is the complete underfunding of primary schools by Government.

Boards of management are the result of the voluntary effort of nearly 25,000 individuals, a quarter of them my colleagues in the INTO. This voluntary effort must be recognised and applauded. But today, at the very time when the demands placed upon these volunteers are growing more onerous by the day, there is a total and utter lack of State support for their roles.

The end result is that most of our principal teachers are picking up the slack at huge costs to themselves. This cannot continue.

There must be a significant increase in funding to ensure that training is available to all who are serving on boards of management. At national level, training courses should be available all over the country for all persons serving on boards, particularly in positions such as treasurer or chairperson.

Without this training, boards cannot function effectively and until it is put in place principal teachers are carrying increased workload and responsibility.

The current responsibilities that boards face, coupled with this lack of training, are fundamental causes of the problem of getting people to volunteer for boards of management. The number of meetings required of a member of a board is surely not the issue, involving as it does a minimum of one per term. Many schools have one meeting of the Board each month - hardly an outrageous time commitment, even in these busy times. It is a fact that the actual responsibilities are serious and broad-ranging and there is an absence of State support.

This leaves school principals to manage the school in most cases. This is an unfair expectation of the principal, who in addition to responsibility for the quality of teaching and learning is also expected to be an expert in employment legislation, financial management and the management of the building. Add to that the ever increasing communication network involving lots of other professionals and you begin to understand the complexity of the job. Most workers are not responsible for personnel management, marketing, manufacture, maintenance and quality control in industry but in the education world, school principals must manage all of these while nurturing our most vulnerable and precious citizens.

There are lots of people in the community with valuable skills who could help by volunteering for some of these roles. Perhaps we need to establish a register of such expertise which schools could call on as necessary.

All of these issues must be examined before the next board elections take place in two years time. Now is the time to prepare.

In addition, the Taoiseach's lack of understanding doesn't only apply to management structures that in a hierarchy of responsibilities might be seen as above the principal, it also extends downwards. Many schools, particularly smaller schools where the principal and teaching staff are busy teaching all day, don't even have a school secretary. That is another example of the extent of Government underfunding of school management. There is no one to answer the phone, make appointments, meet casual callers and sort through the huge amount of mail that arrives each day. So in addition to management responsibilities that impact on the principal, there is the constant disturbance to their class teaching throughout the day which disrupts the learning process and leaves teaching principals feeling guilty about the time taken from their students.

Many of these are teaching multi-classes with children of different ages at different stages of learning. Yes there are some release days from teaching duties (not enough) but there is no guarantee of continuity of substitute provision to teach the principal's class on these days. This is important as parents quite rightly want to know who will be caring for their children if the principal is not teaching on a particular day.

So if the Taoiseach really wants to make sure that problems with school management don't get worse he can start by training boards of management properly, putting in place a proper secretarial service for schools and providing an organised substitute service.

And if the next round of benchmarking doesn't end the disgraceful anomaly which sees second-level principals paid at a higher rate than their primary colleagues, the Taoiseach might just really see who is "indispensable" in primary school management.

Valerie Monaghan is principal of Scoil Chiarán, Glasnevin, Dublin