A review of pre-service training for primary teachers has been ordered by the Minister for Education.
Mr Martin told the Association of Primary Teaching Sisters (APTS) in Drumcondra, Dublin, yesterday that he wanted to ensure that such training was appropriate to the challenges primary teachers would face in the classroom of the 21st century.
"Many teachers have suggested to me the need for a major review of pre-service training and the need to consider wider issues relating to qualifications. I agree with this and I am therefore announcing that I will shortly be appointing a representative group to conduct a major review of this area," he said.
"The terms of reference will include course intake, duration and content. I will be asking them to report within six months and I will publish definite proposals for action, which we will be in a position to begin implementing by the start of the following academic year."
Mr Martin pledged he would ensure that the general physical infrastructure of national schools was in keeping with the standards which pupils and their teachers had a right to expect. He intended to deal with the issue through a transparent system of planning, and in the Budget he had obtained a 40 per cent increase on the previous year's allocation for primary buildings and renovation.
But the problem could not be solved within one year and an objective system of defining and dealing with priorities was required, he added. He had, therefore, commissioned a study which was to report at the end of next month to recommend a points system for the assessment of needs.
Mr Martin told the teaching sisters that more often than not their predecessors in the early years worked under very difficult conditions. "The same generous and unstinting spirit moved in the generations of sisters that followed, and remarkable standards of achievement were recorded in your schools. Perhaps too few have acknowledged the debt this country owes you and those who came before you in following the noble call to help one's fellow human beings.
"And though your numbers are fewer today, your place is assured in the history of Irish education. The respected position of teachers in our society is a recognition of your achievements, and I firmly believe that we must protect and enhance this."
Describing the Education Bill as a "landmark development", the Minister said he was committed to the idea of devolving power from the centre and empowering communities. One of the Bill's aspects was that it underpinned the historic agreement on primary boards of management, and teachers and parents were now entitled to be represented on them.
Mr Martin said an independent teaching council, dedicated to professional development and regulation in the teaching profession, had been mooted for some time, and last year he had appointed a steering committee to advise him on the details of its establishment.
It had been making speedy progress, he said, and he intended that legislation to establish the council would have been enacted by the time he next addressed the conference.
