An insider's guide to education
• PJ Sheehy, the incoming president of the ASTI, has had a difficult week.
A disastrous performance on Today FM's The Last Word was followed by another reversal on the Pat Kenny Show on RTÉ.
At one stage, PJ said the €34 per hour supervision offer wouldn't even buy you a decent ham sandwich! Now we know these Spar sandwiches are expensive - but this is ridiculous.
As PJ explained ASTI's "strategy", Pat Kenny could only audibly shake his head and say it did not make any sense.
TP knows that PJ, a well respected English teacher from Co Wicklow, is a very personable and popular chap. However, he will have to raise his game before he takes the presidential chain.
• Who said boarding-school life was dead?
Not according to the folks out in Blackrock College, who have decided they are not going to close their boarding facility after all.
This is surprising when even prestigious schools like Castleknock College out in north Dublin have decided to phase out their boarding service because of falling parental demand.
The ability of Blackrock to keep theirs going - at least for a few years - shows how popular the school is among its mainly affluent parents.
Steering the school into the future is an inspirational and energetic new principal, Alan McGinty, brother of Karl, a well-known sports journalist.
• Barbara Johnston, the fiesty parents' representative, may have her critics - not least within the dreadfully cautious National Parents Council (Post-Primary) - but TP reckons she knows more about news values than a thousand press officers.
While other parents groups tut-tutted about the ASTI action, Johnston went to the heart of the matter.
Would ASTI, she asked provocatively, take disciplinary action against members who refused to co-operate with the new supervisors?
TP thinks Johnston, a housewife from north County Dublin, would make a great candidate in the general election. She is a beacon of light in a drab political world of consensus.
• TP has learned that some members of the ASTI Standing Committee were among the gang of 25 who demanded an emergency meeting of the 180 member CEC recently.
The central executive reversed an earlier decision of the Standing Committee to enter talks with Michael Woods. Talking about having your loaf and eating it!
Incidentally, TP would like to thank The Mole for all the useful information... Keep it coming!
• Got any education news? You can e-mail TP at teacherspet @irish-times.ie
