IPPN

Published: 12 February 2004

At their annual conference today, the largest gathering of Principals ever in Ireland will hear their Director, Seán Cottrell urge the DES and Management Authorities to address the lack of appropriate procedures required to empower principals to manage underperforming staff.

In an age of transparency and accountability schools are coming under greater scrutiny through Whole School Evaluation (WSE). Currently the principal is the only member of staff identifiable in this process. Given that the principal is being held accountable through both legislation and WSE, for the quality of teaching and learning, principals must have the appropriate procedures, training and support structures to manage the performance of their staff.

Underperformance is a very sensitive issue. Because of this it has not been addressed in a meaningful way before now. This is an issue that can affect all members of the school community: children, parents, teachers, principals and the BoM. IPPN urges the DES and management authorities to provide training and support in this area.

Most principal teachers report little experience of underperforming staff. On the contrary principals speak with great pride of the professionalism, commitment and amazing goodwill of their school staff. Because the issue of underperformance has never been addressed or researched there are no statistics available to profile the scale of the problem. The incidence of underperforming staff though relatively very small, is a serious problem when it occurs, with broad implications for the entire school community.

The problem can manifest itself in a variety of ways - people who "can't do" the job, "won't do" the job, "won't let others" do their jobs, "behave in a way which negatively effects professionalism and general staff morale". Underperforming staff can include S.N.As, caretakers, secretaries, teachers and principals.

There are currently a number of barriers to managing underperformance:

1. Governance gap - Education Act 1998, Section 24 requires the DES and management authorities to develop procedures for dealing with performance management. None have been developed to date.

2. The Education Act fails to clarify the relative roles of the principal and the inspector in the management of the professional competence of staff.

Meanwhile IPPN advises BoMs and Principals to utilise the Dept. of Enterprise and Employment (2000) Statutory instrument when difficult situations arise for discipline of staff in the workplace. This is a generic procedure which can be used in any workplace in the absence of locally developed and agreed procedures.

Larry Fleming and John Curran, PRO, IPPN.