With the industrial relations climate more settled than for many years, this week's teacher conferences marked a returned focus on educational rather than pay issues.
It was hard not to be impressed by the quality of debate across the three conferences. A striking feature was the depth of commitment from teachers to a better education service. A good proportion of the motions at the conferences were on issues like special needs education and disadvantage.
Like his two immediate predecessors, the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, has identified educational disadvantage as his main policy priority. But there remains the familiar, depressing reality of under-investment, despite the economic buoyancy of the past decade. An early start programme, described by one teacher from Ballymun in Dublin, as an "invaluable assistance" to disadvantaged children remains at a pilot phase, 10 years after its launch. The programme for three and four-year-olds is available in only about 40 of the 350 disadvantaged schools in the State. The TUI conference heard how a litany of other promises to support disadvantaged schools has been broken.
Average class sizes also remain well above the OECD average. Over 47,000 of our children are still being taught in classes of more than 30 pupils. Mr Dempsey says teachers have something of a "hang-up" about class size whereas he prefers to focus on the "outputs" in education. But as teacher after teacher told the INTO conference, smaller classes are the key to successful education. The Coalition partners acknowledged as much when they promised to reduce classes to 20 pupils for all under-nines in their Programme for Government. But, shamefully, little progress has been made.
Mr Dempsey brought better news with his announcement of over 350 special needs teachers for those with what are regarded as mild learning difficulties. Their recruitment will obviate the need for psychological assessments and, hopefully, clear the backlog of more than 7,000 children waiting for assistance. Legitimate questions have been raised about the plan. How will the teachers be trained? Will an undue burden fall on school principals who must decide whether a child needs assistance? For all that, the extra teachers should help to ease the desperate plight of thousands of pupils and their worried parents.
The week also showed the ASTI in recovery mode. Its acting general secretary, Mr John White, made an impressive plea for the union to move forward in a "united, coherent way" with a stress on policies, not personalities. Not all of the bitterness of recent years has subsided but at the end of the week, there is room for confidence that the union will return to Congress and renew its once-powerful links with its sister teaching unions. Such a scenario would be good for teachers, good for the education service and, not least, good for the ASTI.