A new survey points to a near disciplinary crisis in our schools, which is worsening writes Declan Glynn.
The publication tomorrow of the report of the Taskforce on Student Behaviour in Second-Level Schools is a hugely significant moment for all teachers.
The Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) wants the taskforce to address the problem in a robust way. The current situation cannot be allowed to drift.
We have been disappointed before. Nothing of note came from the two previous reports on discipline in schools (1985 and 1997).
Inactivity, if not laissez faire, has characterised the approach of the Department of Education and Science to the problem.
Two short circular letters offering guidance to schools on the formulation of codes of behaviour issued in 1988 and 1991: they are, of course, hopelessly out of date.
If the work of the taskforce is to make any real difference it must bring forward structural reform and an implementation strategy along the lines of Better Behaviour: Better Learning (2001), the report of the Scottish Task Group on Discipline in Schools. The response should include :
Minister for Education Mary Hanafin deserves credit for establishing the taskforce. The Minister would surely concede, nevertheless, that seed-funding of €2 million to implement the recommendations of the taskforce is embarrassingly inadequate. £55 million sterling, dedicated to addressing student behaviour, has been spent by the Scottish Executive since 2001 and thousands of additional posts related to the area have been created.
The recommendations of the taskforce must bring relief and assistance to all schools. However, not all schools are equal. Schools that bear a disproportionate burden by nature of their location in areas of socio-economic deprivation, their transparently administered open enrolment policies and the cohort of challenging students they enrol, should receive additional support, by having applied to them a ratio of teachers to students of 1:12.
Our ground-breaking survey shows a growing crisis of indiscipline in our schools. A huge amount of learning is lost to willing and diligent students owing to the persistent, serious disruption of a minority of students, whose adverse influence on the learning process is out of all proportion to their number.
If res publica or the principle of collective good - what we hold in common or place above self-interest - is to underpin education, it is time to recognise that although subject classrooms are the right places for children, they are not the right places, at all times, for all children.
The absence of "referral-out" systems for misbehaving students is a significant problem for Irish schools. Teachers must have access to an in-school, out-of-class learning support facility for continually disruptive students who are already disaffected or at risk of expulsion, but for whom the application of standard classroom-based strategies has proven ineffectual.
Such centres would provide short-term teaching and behaviour support programmes for persistently disruptive students with a view to reintegrating them into mainstream classes as soon as possible. This is not a novel idea: it was recommended in the 1985 report.
Additional teacher time should also be provided to cater for spontaneous unacceptable incidents of disruption by students by allowing for their immediate referral out of class and the learning of their peers to proceed unhindered.
We also need to legislate to strengthen the authority of teachers and schools, and restore confidence to teachers and to schools in implementing their codes of behaviour. TUI has argued for the setting down in law of the responsibilities of students in their own learning, in a similar vein to education law in Spain and Canada. We also need explicit rights-based legislation for teachers.
The controversial Section 29 procedure under the Education Act, 1998, which allows for appeals by students against suspension or expulsion, should be amended because it fails to balance the interests of the individual student against the rights of other students and teachers.
The common good has been impaired. Inertia and paralysis have been induced in schools through fear of use of the ultimate sanctions of suspension and permanent exclusion, lest their decisions be stood down on technical or procedural grounds.
Since January 2003, appeals boards in Britain must include serving teachers; students are not reinstated simply because of procedural mistakes; and appeals panels are required to balance the interests of excluded students against the interests of others.
Also, reinstatement is not normally recommended in cases which involved violence or threats of violence against students or teachers. We look to the taskforce to recommend the changes to the appeals system which we have identified.
Declan Glynn is assistant general secretary, Teachers' Union of Ireland.