THE PRACTICE of schools closing for half days for teacher meetings and training is set to end under new Department of Education proposals for more “parent-friendly’’ schooling.
The department is also proposing new procedures to monitor the workload of lecturing staff at third level.
The new proposals are set out in the department’s plan for 90,000 education employees, prepared as part of the Croke Park agreement on public service reform.
The agreement requires teachers to work an additional hour per week.
The department says it wants to reduce the “existing deficit in the operation of schools” which results in school planning and staff and other meetings “intruding on class-contact time”.
It plans a new protocol from January which will ensure the additional hour is used to reduce the need for school closure.
The new move is certain to be welcomed by working parents. On average, primary schools close early on at least one day every month to facilitate school meetings.
Schools at primary and second level also regularly close for half days on the day of holidays or on the day schools reopen.
In its submission to the McCarthy report last year, the Department of Education said second-level teachers spent much less time in their schools than their counterparts in virtually every other OECD state.
The department says the “contracted working time required at school” for teachers in the Republic is “one of the lowest in the OECD at primary and secondary level”.
At third level the department favours much stronger “academic workload management” in the institutes of technology.
It wants to remove “impediments’’ to the delivery of the full contracted hours for lecturers [560 hours per year] and a full review of working arrangement by the end of January.
It also wants student feedback to be made available to management.
In the university sector, it says new contractual provisions should be in place by mid-2011 following a review of existing employment contracts.
This will address items such as attendance, academic freedom, annual leave and discipline.
University staff are also being asked to work for an additional hour per week.
The application of this hour will be detailed in individual plans prepared by each university.
On special needs assistants, the department says it will issue a circular next month outlining plans for a more flexible deployment of staff.
It says most assistants will be required to work a minimum of 32 hours per week.
The INTO is the only teaching union to back the Croke Park deal.
The ASTI, the TUI and the Irish Federation of University teachers all rejected the deal, but all three have agreed to take part in “clarification” talks with the department.
