TALKBACK:UNDER THE Croke Park agreement on public service reform, teachers are required to work an additional hour per week at the discretion of management.

In my experience, the vast majority of teachers do not watch the clock. In fact, they often work for additional hours without any payment. Without that voluntary effort in such areas as sports and drama, our schools could not provide the wide range of extra-curricular activities parents and students take for granted.

Most teachers derive huge personal satisfaction from this engagement with their students. Indeed, this is one of the factors that make our schools such dynamic places for the children.

This is the reality of school life. So how should teachers work this additional prescribed hour as part of their wider contribution to digging Ireland out of our current mess?

Our schools represent a massive resource at the heart of all our communities. To most people, they are places where we learn from junior infants to Leaving Cert. Once the examinations are over, however, we move on into the world of third-level education or employment never to darken the school doors again, other than as a parent.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

These days, people have come to appreciate that education is a lifelong process. Much of this learning is acquired outside of the formal education settings of schools or colleges. Yet our schools and the teachers who work in them are tremendous resources that are not being utilised fully.

There are huge gaps in education and training among thousands of adults, which could be filled by schoolteachers.

If thousands of adults could tap into this expertise and experience, it would be a great boon to their lives. Schools have the potential to transform lives and maybe even improve the job prospects of adult learners.

Wouldn’t it be a wonderful sign of renewal throughout every city and town in Ireland if our schools sprang back into life in the evenings as centres of engagement between our teachers and the adult community?

I would happily work with a group of adults one evening a week as my contribution towards national recovery. I believe many of my colleagues across the country would be willing to do the same.

Plenty of adults would value an assessment of their skills and how they relate to the needs of the labour market. Following such an assessment, they could be directed on to courses provided within the school by other relevant teachers, contributing their expertise for their additional hour per week.

If such an initiative were undertaken, it could transform the lives of the many adults who left school with deficiencies in their education to upskill or to retrain for a new career.

Teachers face a choice. They can look inward and rail against the Croke Park deal, or they can be generous – and patriotic.

Brian Mooney is a former president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors