Negotiations to break the impasse with the teaching unions over payments for supervision are expected to resume later today.The meeting comes amid clear signals that the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) will reject the latest tentative offer of €36 an hour, an increase of €2 an hour on the original proposal.
The Minister for Education, Dr Woods, has already signalled he is ready to make these supervision payments pensionable. But he has to provide details yet ohow this will work in practice.
The resumed negotiations come on the eve of a vital TUI executive meeting tomorrow.
The union is not confident it will be able to sell the revised offer to members. Earlier this year, the TUI rejected the original €34 an hour, non-pensionable payment by a large margin.
With the ASTI having already withdrawn from supervision, any TUI ban would put the Government's contingency plan under extreme pressure.
In a further development, the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD) says it could not countenance a situation in which the contingency plan continues into the new school year.
Under the plan - in place since ASTI withdrew from supervision in March - non-teachers have been recruited to carry out supervision and substitution in schools.
The NAPD says it may withdraw co-operation with the new contingency plan when it reviews the issue over the summer months. It says the operation of the plan has "only been possible because, at great personal cost, principals made tremendous efforts to keep schools open for the sake of the students."
NAPD says it is also extremely concerned about the serious, perhaps irreparable, damage being done to the ethos of school communities and to relationships within schools.
"In effect, the contingency plan is being implemented in most schools against the wishes of the teachers and this has inevitably led to tension.
"This tension has meant that some of the most fundamental values, such as student formation, holistic education and interpersonal relationships, for which the Irish second-level school system is justifiably renowned, are being undermined."