Teacher union executives criticise leadership in advance of ballots

Fresh division has emerged within the secondary teacher unions over planned Junior Cycle reforms with two members of the most powerful decision-making committee of the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) publicly rebuking the union’s leadership.

Mark Walshe and Andrew Phelan, who are members of the ASTI Fightback group and also sit on the ASTI's 23-member standing committee, held a press conference in Dublin on Tuesday, appealing directly to teachers to vote No to the Junior Cycle plan in an upcoming ballot regardless of the union's official position.

The ASTI's 180-member Central Executive Committee (CEC) is meeting on Saturday to decide whether to recommend acceptance, ahead of the ballot of all members next month.

Asked whether ASTI Fightback was trying to influence the CEC decision in advance, Mr Walshe replied, “yes, that would be fair enough to say”.

Whatever the outcome, members should make their own judgment on the merits of the reforms, he said.

“You also have to ask, how representative is the CEC? Not to be ageist but there is an age factor. If you’ve only got five years to go in teaching none of this is going to make much difference to you; you can vote in favour of it, you can go back to your school, and by the time it comes in you will be retired anyway.

“Like, I’m one of the youngest people on the CEC and I’m 38.”

ASTI Fightback opposed the Croke Park and Haddington Road deals. And Mr Walshe claimed that a Yes vote in the Junior Cycle dispute would be used by union general secretary Pat King and other senior officials to influence the outcome of a ballot on the Lansdowne Road "pay restoration" agreement.

“You have to remember people like Pat King, they want all these things passed; their job is to help the Government pass these,” he said.

In response, Mr King told The Irish Times: “I have every faith in the ASTI leadership and the members to make intelligent and informed decisions on the Junior Cycle and Lansdowne Road proposals based on factual information.”

The ASTI’s executive committee has already recommended rejection of the Lansdowne Road deal and the CEC is expected to rubber-stamp that position this weekend ahead of a ballot in late September.

Mr Walshe said ASTI Fightback would also be tabling a motion that the union should not be bound by a collective decision of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) on the deal.

“My view is that if we have to leave Ictu to exert the democratic decision of the union then so be it.”

Added bureaucracy

Of the Junior Cycle plan, Mr Walshe said it would lead to added bureaucracy for teachers and a downgrading of the Junior Cert, which “gives students something to strive towards”.

The focus on standardised tests would inevitably lead to school “league tables” and the creation of “a market of education providers”, he said.

Mr Phelan, who came to public attention at the ASTI annual congress in 2014 when he used a loudhailer to interrupt the speech of former minister for education Ruairí Quinn, said the money being spent by the Department of Education on the reforms would be better invested in restoring guidance counselling or reducing class sizes.

He also expressed concern that the CEC would be pressured into supporting the reforms if the executive committee of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) recommended acceptance at a scheduled meeting on Friday.

The pair were joined at the press conference by Dr Geraldine Mooney Simmie, lecturer in education at the University of Limerick, who said the focus on transferable skills in the Junior Cycle reforms had been associated by some experts with a "hollowing out of knowledge".

She argued the reforms were part of an international movement to create “compliant, migrant knowledge workers for a global economy, or a global machine”.

Responding to ASTI Fightback’s comments on the cost of the reforms, a spokesman for the department said it had committed €4.8 million this year to continuing professional development. And “we are sure the ASTI Fightback are not criticising the department for funding teacher education”.

He said the department was unaware of any basis for the €36 million costing cited by the group, noting that a model for delivering the reforms would be prepared for budget 2017.