Hanafin spells out her determination to deal with discipline dilemma

As Minister for Education Mary Hanafin makes her annual appearance at the teachers' conferences, Seán Flynn, Education Editor, asks her about the key issues facing teachers, students and parents

School discipline

Q. Do you accept that the problem has reached a crisis level in a significant number of schools?

I would not say a significant number of schools. I would say it is very, very difficult for some schools in some areas. It is not all over the country. Some coverage is giving the impression that law and order has broken down in our schools, but that hasn't happened.

My whole approach is to tackle the problem in a holistic way, if and when we can. But I want to clarify one key point; I will change Section 29 of the Education Act (which allows for appeals against expulsion) to reflect the rights of the majority and not just the rights of the individual. All I am waiting for is legal advice on how to do that.

Q. Your response to the problem, based on the report of the Task Force on Discipline, is a series of pilot projects in a small number of schools. Are you underestimating it?

I don't think a lot of people realise just what is going to happen. By this time next year, we should be looking at 50 schools having the benefit of new behavioural support teams and about 30 with special support classrooms for challenging students. So, this is a major investment. It will involve more posts and more money. We will reflect on the the pilot projects and expand them to other schools, if that makes sense.

I have €2 million start-up funding and I will be looking for more in the Estimates process.

We will have the new Behavioural Support Teams up and running by September. Schools will then come forward and say if they could do with specialist assistance.

Yes, there is some nervousness - with some schools saying they might be labelled but . . . if they need support here, they should be anxious to get it in the interests of both staff and pupils.

Class size

Q. The major issue for the INTO this week will be class size and overcrowded classrooms. The Programme for Government commits to average classes of under 20 pupils for all under nines by next year. Haven't you failed to honour this?

This commitment might have been met if we did not have the other priorities - special needs, disadvantage and non-national students. In the last five years, the priorities shifted and I make no apologies for it.

Some 800 teachers doing nothing else but teaching English to foreign nationals could not have been foreseen. We have 5,000 special-needs teachers and we have specifically targeted disadvantaged schools, where they have smaller class sizes.

If all of the extra teachers who have gone into the primary schools in the last four years had gone into reducing class size, we would have more than met the commitment in the programme, but we would not have met our obligations to these other students. The average class size is already 24 and there will be another 500 teachers going into the schools next year. There is a further commitment for the following September for more teachers to specifically reduce class size.

Information on schools

Q. Not too long ago, the Department of Education moved to prevent this newspaper from publishing school inspection reports. Now, you are planning to put inspection report on the department's website from next month. What promoted such a dramatic shift in policy?

We are responding to the needs of parents who are entitled to information. Schools are unduly nervous. If they could only see that it is the one thing that will give real, rounded information about their school and reflect what is going on in their school.

Q. What about the very real concerns of teachers that they will be easy to identify in these published reports, even though they will not be named?

Obviously individual reputations have to be protected, but there is no one going out to target people. Remember the inspectors are not looking at the teacher per se; they are looking at teaching and how things can be improved.

The Whole School Evaluation (by department inspectors) is not all about the inspectors going in and saying this is wonderful. It is an honest picture of what is going on. Yes, there has been some suggestion of legal challenges by teachers to prevent publication, but the process has been well explained following consultation with all the partners, so I don't envisage any problems. Remember the response by schools to the inspection reports will also be published simultaneously on the department website.

Underperforming teachers

Q. You acknowledged openly that there is a real problem when it comes to dealing with underperforming teachers? Only a handful of teachers have been dismissed in the past five years. Should we be doing more to reassure parents and to protect the teaching profession?

The whole process of dealing with the underperforming teacher is far too slow. It involves a full two-year process. The employer, the board of management, has to take a sufficiently hands on role.

Schools are the employers. Schools recruit and select teachers. The principal is the one who can see what is going on.

It is a serious problem. At second level, the underperforming teacher is often carried by colleagues. He or she is given a minimal timetable and removed from exam classes.

At primary level, where a class can have one teacher for a year or more, it is even more vital that the principal deals with underperformance from the first time it comes to his or her attention.

Now, the new Teaching Council will have a role to play here as they can begin a fitness to teach inquiry. Indeed this whole area is going to be a key test for the council.

But there is more we should be doing. We need to identify the problem at a much earlier stage and also provide more support for those experiencing professional difficulties. It is an area I will continue to monitor.

Grind culture

Q. How concerned are you with the increasing grind culture in our schools?

The grind culture is having an enormous and negative impact. The idea of students coming up and taking digs in Dublin over Easter and going home with a wad of notes is ridiculous. Students are believing the hype. There is the notion that if you pay for something you will get more out of it.

I think the whole grind culture will be undermined when we introduce the aptitude tests for medicine because no matter what grinds you take, you will not get in if you do not have an aptitude. And if it works for medicine, it could be introduced in other high-points areas.

School enrolment policies

Q. There is continuing concern that some schools - especially in the fee-paying sector - are not doing enough to accommodate special-needs and foreign national students.

One principal was telling me recently how he is being forced to take all non-nationals in the local area. He told me, and I thought it was very telling, and I quote, that "all the other schools in the area have waiting lists and they are all white."

There is a lot of dumping going on - and not just in fee-paying schools. Schools will say Johnny's needs would be better served in another school.

It is a clear breach of the Education Act which requires school to have inclusive admission poliicies. It is an area that I want to keep an eye on. But I need something more than anecdotal evidence.

Hanafin on...

The proposed two-stage Leaving Cert exam . . .

My plan is to move Paper I in Irish and English to a Saturday in May, hopefully from June 2007. There are some logistical problems, but they are not insurmountable. There could be a delay until 2008 because we need to give schools a long lead-in time. But I am still hopeful we can do it by next year in the interests of students.

Transition Year . . .

Some schools are excellent when it comes to transition year and some are all over the place.

I am anxious to get more schools to do transition year, especially disadvantaged schools. There are very few of them offering it at the moment and I want to give them more positive support.

I am not keen on making the year compulsory. It could make it more difficult for some schools to retain students after the Junior Cert exam.

Maths . . .

We know that the maths course needs to be made more relevant and more practical. We are average on the OECD international tables, but do not want to slip.

Languages . . .

We are not doing well on languages generally. This is being reflected even at third level. We are the only country in Europe where there has been a decline in the numbers accepting places on the Erasmus programme [ which allow for study in other EU states]. They are linking this decline to our language ability.

Irish . . .

We need a greater oral language focus. There is a new programme at primary school, but the Leaving Cert course is still much too literature-based .

McIvor report on further education . . .

The further education sector has been very well supported by Government in recent years. The McIvor report calls for a further huge increase in investment. We are working to see what elements can be successfully implemented.

Aspects of McIvor will be implemented, but some proposals are not going to happen. The whole lot of it would cost €48 million, with 800 new posts.

Third level reform . . .

Some of the universities have done really well in terms of reform, particularly UCC, UCD and Trinity. They came up against really strong opposition from 100-year-old practices and yet they managed to reform and are aiming towards much more student-friendly classes as well. So they have to be commended on that.

The new €300 million Strategic Innovation Fund is a way of incentivising and recognising that. The level of consultation in education . . .

Decision-making can be slow, but we get there.

Being Minister for Education . . .

Everyone knows I love the job and I give it seven days a week. I have visited well over 200 schools. There is not a day I do not enjoy it.