Teachers have a case for substantially more pay. Although they work fewer hours than the rest of us and enjoy more holidays (yeah, yeah, we know about the homework and the exam correcting and the crosswords), they do work more intensively than most of the rest of us. Their job is also more important. More important than the jobs of journalists of lawyers, of bankers, of stockbrokers, of accountants, of bishops, of civil servants. They are the pivot of our culture, our economy and our society. They transmit and shape the values, the skills and the knowledge, which make us what we are. It is a little odd then - even taking into account the short hours, the long holidays, the permanent, secure and pensionable jobs and no accountability - that they are paid so poorly in comparison to journalists, lawyers, bankers, stockbrokers, accountants, bishops and civil servants.

So they have a point about pay. They have a point also about recognition. Hegel argued that the primary motor of human history was not science or technology or economic growth but rather the struggle for recognition. This is a factor not alone among peoples but among people. It is easy to accept therefore that the impulse of the present pay demand by teachers is not just opportunism and greed (although it is not believable that these are not factors) but a sense of disrespect. While the greed.dot.ie society - the Mary Harney society - spectacularly has enriched the young thrusting entrepreneurs, they have remained behind, disregarded and unvalued. The tax cuts benefit them marginally, while benefiting the rich massively and this has been the feature of all budgets during the past decades.

The redistributive mechanism that would permit a shift of resources from the high-flyers to the steady flyers is breaking down, breaking down because our political culture has devalued fairness. The teachers are right to believe that they will get a far better deal than is currently on offer if they strike and then escalate their disruption by using the 2001 Leaving Certificate students as a negotiating lever. There will be the usual bluster from the Government about the impossibility of going outside the present mechanisms and then they will go outside the present mechanisms and give in to the teachers in a way that doesn't look too blatant. They (the Government) will be pressed into this by opportunist noises from Fine Gael and Labour, both of whom will see a chance to convert an important electorate in what they think will be an election year. So why don't we cut to the chase right now and avoid all the hassle? And why not extract from the teachers crucial concessions in return for giving them more pay than the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness allows?

THERE IS AN obvious mechanism and it is the peculiarly named "The Public Service Benchmarking Body", which is due to report by the end of June 2002. The teachers have just got a pay hike of 8.5 per cent. They will get a further 10 per cent within two years. If they were to get an additional 8 per cent, say in October of next year, that would sort it out and this could be done through a speeded-up benchmarking process. Isn't it obvious that this is what will happen anyway? But in return for this the teachers will have to agree to accountability. Please spare us the blather about accountability operating now through the school inspectorate, we all know this is balderdash.

We also know that there is a sizeable minority of teachers who should not be allowed near a class because of incompetence, laziness or burn-out (usually self-induced). We know that these teachers do damage to the welfare of students. We know that the present system protects such teachers. It must change. For starters, the school Leaving Certificate results should be published annually, along with the students Leaving Certificate results. This would highlight schools that are doing badly because of social disadvantage, poor resources and bad teaching. The publication of the results would force action to deal with these three problems - it would highlight the necessity for special attention for disadvantaged areas, the necessity for more resources to under-resourced schools and necessity to remove bad teachers.

The vehemence of the opposition to the publication of Leaving Certificate results for schools on the part of all vested interests (the teachers unions, the Department of Education, the religious orders and the boards of management) in itself should be proof of its necessity. As a rule of thumb, anything that disturbs a whole nest of vested interests has got to be in the public interest. Accountability should not stop at that. There should be annual individual assessments of teachers done through an improved inspectorate system and these assessments should be available to parents.

So there it is on a plate, the solution to the teachers row: give them benchmarking by June of next year but explicitly in return for accountability including the publication of Leaving Certificate results by school. But what will happen is that the dispute will be allowed to drag on, then there will be early benchmarking and no accountability.