Minister also favours moves to ease exam timetable pressure on Leaving Cert students, writes Seán Flynn, Education Editor
A new series of measures to combat the breakdown in discipline in some schools is being explored by the Minister for Education and Science, Ms Hanafin.
In an interview yesterday, she said she also favours new moves to lessen the pressure on Leaving Cert students. This could see new arrangements where subjects like Irish and English are no longer examined on consecutive days.
She said the message was coming strongly from teachers that discipline was an increasing problem. Some of those responsible for anti-social behaviour outside school at night would be sitting before teachers in the classroom on the following morning.
"We need to look at international best practice in this area and see what can be done," she said.
Ms Hanafin, a former secondary teacher at Sion Hill in Blackrock, Dublin, said that the "education system has been getting a battering it did not deserve". But the reality, she said, was that it was held in very high regard internationally.
For all that, she said, there were many problems within the system which needed to be addressed. The drop-out rate from second-level schools was a serious concern and the overall issue of disadvantage would remain a priority.
On the Leaving Cert, she said the exam had some considerable merits. It was anonymous, fair and objective and was not open to any kind of interference.
But she said the current timetabling of the exam - which can see students in an exam hall for over seven hours on one day - placed huge pressure on students.
"There are things we can do to ease this pressure. . . It may be we need something more staggered," she said. She would be consulting the State Examinations Commission on these issues.
The Minister said she had no overall priority in office. Rather, she wanted to identify the priority needs in each area of education, primary, second level and third level.
Ms Hanafin also made clear her opposition to school league tables. No league table could capture the essence of a school, she said.
League tables, she said, put a school "up in lights" on the basis of its performance in one area. "In my time teaching, I was as delighted to see a weak student pass Irish as an honours student gain an A1 in history. . . but that is not captured [in the league tables]," she said.
At the same time, she said parents had a right to information on schools as long as this was being used to help them make a choice.
On third level, Ms Hanafin said the recent OECD report set out a clear path. There was much in terms of new structures that could be done, she said. She was working to secure greater funding for the the sector, which experienced an effective 10 per cent cut in spending last year.
More generally, she said one of the things she would not be doing was commissioning more reports or establishing new task forces. A huge number of reports were on her desk and she was anxious to move on these. But she cautioned: "I am not someone who implements something just because it is recommended in a report. There is a tendency to treat recommendations of an expert report as the gospel. But it should be used to guide policy."