ASTI conference: ASTI members are legally obliged to allow inspectors into schools, and the union will be advising its members to do so, delegates were told on the last day of its annual conference yesterday.
In a significant move, Mr John White, acting general secretary, said the ASTI had received legal advice that, if teachers were required by the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, to teach in front of inspectors, then they were obligated to do so.
Previous policy has been that any member who refused to teach in front of an inspector could expect union support.
Mr White warned, however, that the ASTI had not been consulted about the Department's guide to subject inspection at second level. At future meetings he and the ASTI president, Mr Pat Cahill, would be stating that the Department was in breach of the Education Act and consequently Sustaining Progress because it had not consulted with the ASTI and others before drawing up this guide.
Mr White was responding to calls from delegates for the leadership to answer charges that it had failed to support some of its members who refused to allow inspectors into their classes.
In a heated debate, Mr Joe Power, an executive member from Clare, accused the leadership of "bullying and intimidating" its own members in a school in Ennis, Co Clare, in order to allow the benchmarking process to be signed off last year.
However, the president-elect, Ms Susie Hall, launched a strong defence of the leadership's actions. "To give members the impression that we can always and forever defend their right not to teach [in front of an inspector] is to betray them," she said. "This may not be what people want to hear, but I cannot change the law of the land."
Teachers were not afraid of inspections, but had serious concerns about the form this might take, delegates were also told.
Mr Bernard Lynch, of the union standing committee, said he wanted to make sure that any system would resist "the worst excesses of an inspectorate system that has plagued the UK". There was a risk, he said, that such inspections could make "scapegoats" of teachers. The Government is probably breaking the law by not paying money owed to thousands of non-permanent teachers, delegates were told. Mr Francis Kennedy, from Waterford, said the need to computerise records of hours worked by teachers was "no excuse" for the Department not to pay the money. This money is due to be backdated to 2001, when a law was passed entitling all non-permanent workers to the same rates of pay as their full-time counterparts.