Primary school principals are on the verge of taking industrial action in an attempt to have new salary scales and paid secretarial and caretaking assistance provided, it emerged at the weekend.
More than 300 primary school principals attending the two-day Irish National Teachers' Organisation Biennial Principals Consultative Conference held in Westport, Co Mayo, on Friday and Saturday supported the motion of immediately alerting the Minister for Education, Mr Martin, to the threat of industrial action.
Three years ago, primary principals agreed to defer such action to allow the then minister for education set up a review group to examine the role of principals and make recommendations.
Since then, principals claim, they have had to take on extra responsibilities and duties, implementing the new 1999 school curriculum, drawing up data in accordance with the legal implications of the first Education Act, issued in 1998, and fulfilling specific principal duties, as outlined in the review paper.
Mr John Carr, the INTO general treasurer, said increasing workloads involving time, energy and commitment faced principals, but no human resource management of secretarial or caretaking staff was being made available to support this extra work.
"Increased demands for openness, transparency, accountability, participation, evaluation and quality mean school principals must now focus on garnering, recording, maintaining and updating increasing amounts of information. This entails an ever-increasing number of meetings and other consultation processes for principals, for which there is no pay," he said.
Individual principals demanded a minimum basic salary increase for principals of 20 per cent and a 50 per cent increase in allowances. Demands were also made for travelling expenses of 70p a mile, to cover school-related activities.
Rewards for principals who voluntarily update their skills and study new courses, and for the use of principals' homes as offices out of hours, were also demanded.
"We want a share in this country's new-found wealth and profits," said one principal. "We are the day-to-day managers of schools and we want managers' wages," said another.
Delegates also complained that principals' jobs had become so unattractive that out of 20,000 teachers qualified to apply, only two applications on average were received for advertised vacancies.