FUTURE CONTRACT arrangements for teachers should include a total statutory working time which would provide for activities outside the classroom, as recommended by the McCarthy report, a senior educationalist has said.
Dr Don Thornhill, formerly secretary general at the Department of Education and executive chairman of the Higher Education Authority, said these activities would include “school planning, parent-teacher meetings, in-service training and development, supervision of students and middle-management duties”.
Currently chairman of the National Competitiveness Council, but speaking in a personal capacity, Dr Thornhill presented a paper to the MacGill Summer School which supported the view of “An Bord Snip Nua” that the teaching contract was “unduly restrictive” and excessively costly.
“What did disquiet me though when I was in the Department of Education and Science were the many rigidities in the system – which I believe are neither in the interests of education or of teachers themselves,” Dr Thornhill said.
“These included what was then the overwhelming importance of school-based seniority for promotion in most schools, the initial opposition from teachers to whole-school assessment by the Inspectorate of the Department, the reluctance to engage with parents, through, for example, parent-teacher meetings – other than at times which suited teachers more than other working adults – and what seemed to be an almost obsessive focus on ensuring that time spent on professional development would be compensated for by teaching time off in lieu.
“These behaviours are legacies of another era and were accompanied by a mindset which sought additional payment for any structural change, and are unaffordable.
“These inefficiencies and their costs are described in the ‘Bord Snip Nua’ report. I agree with Colm McCarthy and his colleagues that future contract arrangements for teachers should include a total statutory working time which would provide for activities such as school planning, parent-teacher meetings, in-service training and development, supervision of students and middle-management duties where and when appropriate as defined by school management.
“The relevance of this recommendation is borne out by the concern at primary and secondary levels that the burdens of management and legislative compliance fall disproportionately on school principals.
“In many cases this leaves them with insufficient time to focus on learning outcomes. Principals, through their boards of management, should be accountable for school performance – but they need support in terms of being able to distribute responsibilities and tasks within the school team to those best fitted to carry them out,” Dr Thornhill said.
Provost of Trinity College Dublin, Dr John Hegarty said the “Bord Snip” view of the university sector as largely undergraduate in nature was 20 years out of date.
Describing how TCD and University College Dublin had joined together last March in a pro-enterprise Innovation Alliance, he said: “The essence of our joint action is a transformation of the Master’s and PhD programme into one that better prepares students for a career outside of academia.” He said this model was “at odds with the McCarthy report which, as I read it, views universities as they were 20 years ago, largely undergraduate in nature, but it is a model that is consistent with Government policy, with the Smart Economy, it is consistent with the OECD view of the world and the OECD’s view of Ireland, with the EU’s view of the world and it is consistent with US president Obama’s view of the role of American universities, which is very clearly stated and which featured very strongly in his stimulus package”.
Fine Gael education spokesman, Brian Hayes said no department could be immune from adjustments recommended in the McCarthy report: “But what we’ve got to ringfence, is the front-line staff, and the most important hardware that you have in any education system are your teachers.
“I want to make it absolutely clear that I will not support any reduction in the number of teachers in our primary and post-primary system under any set of circumstances,” he said, adding that the Department of Education was over-centralised and “Stalinist” and “possibly the most dysfunctional” of all departments. “Higher education should be realigned with a new department of learning, training and enterprise and, effectively, our Department of Education become a department of schools,” he said.
