ASTI: Not bad for a 90-year-old

The ASTI is 90 years old. The initiative to form an association to represent the interests of secondary teachers in Ireland was taken by a group of teachers in St Colman's College, Fermoy, Co Cork, who convened a meeting in Cork on St Patrick's Day 1909.

This ad hoc committee arranged for a further meeting in the Mansion House, Dublin, the following July where they drew up a list of rules and the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland was formally established. The decision to establish the association was not before its time.

Some years earlier the Association of Intermediate and University Teachers had been founded in Cork. It's not known why the secondary teachers decided to go it alone, but it is known that secondary teachers had been impressed by the strides made by the Irish National Teachers Organisation which had been founded in 1868.

The primary teachers had achieved a great deal in the previous 40 years. They had security of tenure and also a pension scheme for their retired members. In addition they had been influential in the development of new curricula.

These were conditions to which the lay secondary teachers aspired. They were few, scattered throughout the country and worked at the whim of their employers.

One secondary teacher writing at the end of the 19th century said: "At present the service of public instruction in Ireland is about the worst mode of obtaining a livelihood open to a man of intelligence and education."

The ASTI launched a very successful lobbying campaign to win support for its aims of achieving security of tenure, super-annuation and a registration council. It's not surprising that it achieved widespread publicity for its stated objectives when it is noted that among its earliest members were Eamon De Valera, Thomas MacDonagh and Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington.

John Dillon championed the cause of the fledgling association in the House of Commons when he said that secondary teachers were "the most sweated members of any profession I know of. They have no security of tenure, no professional recognition. They do not know from month to month whether they will be turned onto the street, with no prospects before them - and their salaries are simply deplorable."

In due course the ASTI achieved all the objectives of its founding members and its membership has increased exponentially with the expansion of second-level education. It grew from a handful of teachers in 1909 to about 300 in 1934. By 1959 the number had risen to 950 and today there are more than 15,000 paid up members.

Nowadays, the ASTI is represented both nationally and internationally in a very broad range of educational activities. It combines the dual role of trade union and professional association.

During the 90 years of its existence, it has seen the role of the secondary teacher expand from that of a hired hand who could be dismissed at the whim of management to becoming one of the mainstays of the secondary school system, represented at all levels in the development and administration of an effective second-level educational structure.

This role is set to increase as the numbers of religious in education continues to decline. The ASTI has adapted to all the developments political, social, industrial and educational that have occurred in Ireland during this century and it is set to continue in that mode into the 21st century.

Not bad for a 90-year-old!

Louis O'Flaherty is a former president of ASTI