AG to rule on legal issue over filling of school posts
- Published: 07 July 2005
THE Attorney General has been asked to decide urgently if it is legal for schools to fill promotion posts partly on the basis of seniority.
This follows a strong warning that the existing procedures discriminate against women and favour men.
If the Attorney General agrees, it will mean new procedures for promotions in all schools. It could also have implications for promotion posts in areas of the wider public service where seniority counts.
At present, all special duties posts and assistant principal posts in voluntary secondary schools are filled on the basis of seniority. In vocational and community schools 30pc of the marks are allocated to seniority, the remainder to suitability and qualifications.
In primary schools experience gained through length of service in the school is one of three criteria used.
The possible legal crux was first spotted following an equality audit by the Kerry Education Service run by the county's VEC. It said "the current system for added marks due to seniority is seen to favour men." It recommended a review of the operation of seniority as a criterion.
In many schools men have a disproportionate number of promotion posts, even though they are outnumbered by women. The argument is that women lose out because they tend to take more time off for career breaks, maternity leave or for job sharing.
The argument is that the seniority criterion indirectly discriminates against women but this is strongly disputed by the Teachers' Union of Ireland.
The matter was raised at the Irish Vocational Education Association annual conference and by the Association at the most recent meeting of the Teachers' Conciliation Council. It is understood the Department of Education and Science agreed there were possible concerns and referred the matter to the Attorney General's office.
Initially the Attorney General's office is being asked if it is safe to continue to use the existing procedures as an interim measure, pending reflection on the broader use of seniority in promotion.
'Call garda
- Published: 06 July 2005
STUDENTS engaged in borderline criminal
activity in the classroom should be reported to the gardaí, Education
Minister Mary Hanafin has insisted.
It emerged yesterday that up to 10% of the
school population was engaged in disruptive behaviour. Those who
engaged in extreme behaviour, however, represented a very small
proportion.
The minister yesterday said: "Anything that is bordering on creating damage or going to the extreme for a teacher or another student in the classroom should be reported if it is verging on criminal behaviour."
Students who are out at night or the weekend, sitting on the walls,
terrorising old people, throwing stones or being abusive were not going
to change their behaviour when they came to school on a Monday morning.
"That may not be bordering on the criminal but it is something all of
us as a school community have got to tackle," said Ms Hanafin as she
received the interim report of the Task Force on Student Behaviour in
Second-Level Schools.
Dr Maeve Martin, who chairs the task force, had made specific reference to cases that would be considered criminal.
"If they are, then those students should be reported to the gardaí," she said.
But Ms Hanafin said she did not believe principals should now take a zero tolerance approach to such students and expel them.
She believed the education system should be an inclusive one where every effort is made to support and involve such students.
Expelling a student was not necessarily the right answer because each student was entitled to an education but that right had to be balanced against the rights of other students in the same classroom.
Dr Martin said there was now evidence from other countries, including Britain, that the mental health of students was "more brittle" than it was a decade ago. There was now an onus on schools not only to teach, but to take care of the students.
Click here to access the article on the Irish Examiner web-site
Irish Pride at New Multiculturalism
- Published: 06 July 2005
While many European nations struggle with the immigration issue, Ireland has adopted a more positive attitude, offering free English lessons, and celebrating its newfound multiculturalism.
A new wave of immigrants have been making their way to Ireland
When a national economy thrives the way Ireland's has in recent years, you might expect the capital city to take on an increasingly international flavour.
But an Irish market town, situated on bog land, in the middle of the country, a place of cattle-rearing, peat-cutting and whiskey-making?
Walk up the main street in Tullamore, County Offaly, in 2005 and you will hear languages of Africa, Asia, South America and Eastern Europe.
Within the space of only about five years, foreign faces have become the norm.
'Growing awareness'
"We're coming on, you know," one local man said. "We may only be a small town but we're metropolitan now!"
I have been looking at Ireland's new ethnic mix through the - slightly unlikely - eyes of the Adult Literacy Agency.
It was given the responsibility for making sure English language lessons were available free of charge to every immigrant who wanted them.
Inez Bailey, the agency's director, told me: "There was a growing awareness that we needed more of our population to be productive and involved in society".
She admitted to having had to organise things "in a bit of a vacuum" because immigration on today's scale was such a new phenomenon for Ireland.
But once it was established that the foreigners did not have to declare their legal status to be entitled to language lessons, they came "in droves".
In demand
Several years ago, Mary McLoughlin volunteered to help run adult education classes in a classroom off the market square in Tullamore.
The classes have proved extremely popular with the new arrivals
At that time Ms McLoughlin never imagined her services would be in such demand from a new workforce lapping up the rules of English grammar.
"We're a multi-national town now," she said, "and we meet multi-national needs."
At a Tuesday evening lesson given by Tanya Moran - a Belorussian woman married to a County Offaly man - it is evident Ireland is one of only three old EU countries to open its doors straight away to migrant workers from the new Eastern European members.
Among her students are a plasterer from Latvia, a cook from Poland and a waitress from Hungary.
They are so focused on improving their English that they often work through breaks.
Foreign workforce
A couple of kilometres away on the outskirts of town, a busy building site typical of many in the area, provides more insight into the kind of social upheavals going on.
Brendan Grimes is supervising work on 200 near-identical new houses, expected to be snapped up as rental properties, second homes or new homes for Irish families becoming smaller.
About 65% of his workforce is foreign "from Poland, Brazil, China, Lithuania", he said.
"It's a great mix. It's a very good thing for me."
Brendan warned against thinking that his attitude is universal here, and spoke about racism in some parts of Irish society.
But he said his own approach is shaped by having been an itinerant builder and immigrant himself - nine years in the UK, and three years in Germany.
"I know what it's like," he said, "there was no work here when I left school."
"There was just a boat in Rosslare and away you went to England and did whatever had to be done to earn a living.
"These guys here are the very same, they're hungry for the work, nothing is a problem. I have admiration for them all... and we need them.
"The Celtic Tiger couldn't keep on going if it wasn't for them."
Jack, from southern China, is employed on the site as a plasterer.
He said he earned the kind of money in Ireland he could only dream of at home; money to give his wife a good standard of living, and to give his four-year-old son a private education.
Sharing skills
On other days of the week, the classroom at Tullamore Adult Learning Centre is used by local people who come for lessons to improve their reading and writing skills.
I asked farmer Kevin O'Duffy from Ballycumber, if he thought it was right that an education budget funded by Irish tax-payers should also buy English lessons for the newcomers.
"Yes, it's right," he said. "They're quite welcome as far as I'm concerned.
"It's good for the community that people are going to settle down and bring skills and knowledge from their own countries, whatever it may be.
"So we need to help them achieve their goals and help them communicate with the people of Ireland."
Social revolution in rural Ireland? Maybe.
Click here to access the article on www.bbc.co.uk
Hibernia graduates and appointments for 2005-2006
- Published: 04 July 2005
Students on the Hibernia course will complete examinations in August, results will issue in September and conferral will be in October 2005. The Hibernia graduates will receive recognition as qualified primary teachers with effect from 1st October 2005 or later if the results are not available to the Department before 1st October.
Students on the Hibernia course will complete examinations in August, results will issue in September and conferral will be in October 2005. The Hibernia graduates will receive recognition as qualified primary teachers with effect from 1st October 2005 or later if the results are not available to the Department before 1st October.
A Board of Management may appoint a Hibernia graduate to a post assuming panels are clear for permanent posts - on a provisional basis. If the teacher does not achieve the required results from Hibernia for qualification purposes, then the appointment must cease and the BOM must endeavour to recruit a fully qualified primary school teacher. The teacher will be paid at the unqualified rate of pay, unless post primary qualified, until s/he is recognised as a qualified primary school teacher.
Click here to access the article on the CPSMA website.29 June, 2005 -10m provided for free school text books for disadvantaged students
- Published: 29 June 2005
Under the Department of Education and Science grant scheme funding of just over 7 million has been allocated to 441 secondary and community and comprehensive schools and 33 Vocational Education Committees nationwide.3.86 million has been paid to 2,719 primary schools throughout the country to make textbooks available to their students.
Principal teachers have flexibility in administering the book grant schemes in schools based on their knowledge of particular circumstances in individual cases. The funding is paid to schools in June in order to allow enough time for books to be bought before the start of the new school year in September.
Minister Hanafin said "This book grant enables schools to give practical assistance to those pupils who need it most, where families are experiencing a particular hardship because of unemployment, prolonged illness of a parent or other family circumstances that leads to financial hardship. Having the right books means they can participate fully and take every opportunity afforded to them to meet their potential. Promoting inclusion, participation and achievement of people from socio-economically disadvantaged areas is a priority for the Government."
Minister Hanafin encouraged more schools to operate book loan/rental schemes "Each year financial burden is put on parents to provide textbooks for their children as they go back to school. School authorities have been advised that books should only be changed where necessary, to enable students' work to be kept educationally stimulating and to ensure that content and methodology are kept up to date. For these reasons, the re-use of textbooks by pupils has many advantages."
This school book grant scheme has been in existence at both levels since 1967. In 1997, 3.18million was spent on the school book grant at primary level and 3.14 million at post primary level.
A higher rate of grant is paid to primary schools that operate a loan/rental scheme and also to schools that are included in the Department's Disadvantaged Areas Scheme.
Post-primary school authorities can also use the annual grant for the establishment of book loan/rental schemes. The Department of Education & Science also provides funding to help designated disadvantaged schools establish book rental schemes.
