Four organisations representing teachers, parents and managers delivered a letter to Micheal Martin on Friday, seeking an urgent meeting to resolve a growing crisis in second-level schools.
Their protest to the Minister for Education and Science concerns a teacher shortage caused by new management structures. Essentially, it's this: a teacher promoted as an assistant principal is allowed four hours per week to carry out administrative tasks and duties - meaning the new assistant principals each teach four hours less per week. This has caused a shortfall in the availability of teachers. These appointments followed the PCW agreement, which provided for the appointment of more than 1,000 new assistant principals at postprimary level.
Pressure is now being put on the Minister to solve the resulting timetabling chaos in second-level schools, now that more than 350 new assistant-principal posts have been filled. In an unprecedented joint campaign, the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI), the Irish Vocational Education Association (IVEA) and the Parents' Association for Vocational Schools and Community Colleges (PAVSCC) came together at the start of this month to launch a campaign of action.
A fourth organisation, the Parents' Association for Community and Comprehensive Schools (PACCS), has now joined the campaign.
Following increasing pressure from teachers and principals in recent weeks, the four groups met again on Friday to plan further action. They have now called for a joint meeting with the Minister to resolve the growing crisis. Together the four organisations want additional teaching resources to be put in place. "Our fears about timetabling are being realised," says Joe Carolan, president of the TUI. "I have been inundated with phone calls from teachers expressing concern at the teaching-hours deficit. "They cannot cope. We need the meeting with the Minister and then action by the Department to allocate the additional teaching resources required."
The only way schools can manage is by cutting teaching time and subjects for students, says Michael Moriarty, general secretary of the IVEA. Although he welcomes the new management structure, "this should not be established on the backs of our students," he says.
It is expected that the loss of teaching time will translate into subjects being dropped. Currently schools and colleges in the VEC sector are having to make contingency plans for shorter class periods - or closing school early on specified days in order to comply with the new conditions. "This scenario is the only way principals have open to them to deal with the impending crisis," says Michael O'Regan, president of the PAVSCC. It is "totally unacceptable", he says.
