The Department of Education is set to make a new offer to teachers to stave off fresh disruption in schools.
The offer - which will make supervision payments pensionable for the first time - is an attempt to break the deadlock between the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) and the Government.
At a critical meeting with the teacher unions on Thursday, the Department will flesh out details of how the payment of €37 an hour for substitution and supervision will be made pensionable.
The ASTI is expected to call a special convention shortly to review its policy on the issue. A meeting of the union's 23-member standing committee later this week will review the ban on supervision, in place since March.
The ASTI president, Mr P.J. Sheehy, signalled at the weekend that pension payments for supervision could dramatically alter the picture. He said the union would be "in a different situation if the supervision payments were pension-able".
Some older teachers are anxious not to miss out on any additional pension payments, but others believe there should be no compromise until the union's wider pay claim is resolved.
The Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) general secretary, Mr Jim Dorney, has said that any proposed special payment to school principals for their assistance with supervision arrangements must be agreed through the teachers' conciliation scheme. The Department has hinted that a payment of about €2,500 will be made to principals for the additional workload involved in supervision.
The Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) said it was concerned at reports that principals at second level might get paid extra for co-operating with supervision arrangements. "The assumption that supervision and substitution are not issues in primary schools, and that all is well in primary schools and all will be well in September, is unfounded," said its general secretary, Mr John Carr.
The ASTI special convention is necessary because the standing committee alone does not apparently have the legal power to overturn a motion passed by this year's convention. This stated that the supervision issue could not be addressed until its pay campaign was resolved.
Internally, the ASTI remains bitterly split over its future strategy. Recently some members of the union circulated a document on benchmarking which is critical of the general secretary, Mr Charlie Lennon.
The document, which highlights the "hidden dangers" of benchmarking, was signed by two members of the standing committee, Mr Kevin McEneaney and Ms Sheila Parson.
Several other ASTI members also signed the document, including Ms Phil Roberts, Mr Joe McDonagh, Mr Kevin Lewis, Mr Tim Nelligan, Ms Nora Ní Mhurchu and Mr Kevin Brogan.