PRIMARY SCHOOL teachers have threatened to take industrial action, including a series of one-day stoppages, to highlight the Government's "broken promises " on class sizes. SEÁN FLYNN, Education Editor reports from Kilkenny
Minister for Education Mary Hanafin yesterday responded to the threat, issued at the INTO annual conference in Kilkenny, with a warning that the action could jeopardise teachers' pay increases.
Ms Hanafin said any strike on the issue would represent a serious breach of the national pay agreement.
Delegates to the TUI conference also voted in favour of industrial action yesterday in a separate dispute about discipline in classrooms.
Ms Hanafin was jeered and heckled by INTO delegates on the class size issue yesterday; the first time in four years as Minister that she has drawn a hostile response at a teachers' union conference.
Delegates voted unanimously to back possible strike action after a robust address from the union's general secretary, John Carr, which detailed what he termed the Minister's "betrayal" on the issue.
The Republic has the second largest class size in the EU. Last year, over 18,000 people attended protest meetings on the issue organised by the INTO.
The last two programmes for government in 2002 and last year included specific commitments to reduce class size but neither has been delivered, he said.
In his address, Mr Carr accused the Minister of reneging on commitments on class size and other issues.
He said: "Far from finishing the job that needs to be done, you have allowed it to grind to a halt. Far from progressing the issues that I raised with you last year, the primary education agenda this year has gone into reverse."
Ms Hanafin was jeered when she said the economic backdrop made it impossible to deliver some commitments, but she insisted the Government remained committed to progressive reductions in class sizes.
Delegates were unimpressed. They unanimously backed a motion calling on the INTO executive to take whatever action is necessary, up to and including industrial action to ensure commitments on class size are honoured.
The INTO would have to ballot members before any industrial action is taken. But sources stressed that all options were on the table given the pent-up anger among teachers on the issue.
Some of this was evident in the debate on the issue.
Turning to the Minister, Mr Carr recalled how she had come to the conference last year and made specific commitments on class size.
"The same commitments were written into the programme for government. Then under cover of the Budget, your Government turned your collective back on primary school children, their parents and their teachers and callously cast those commitments aside. Your Government has broken your word and in doing so betrayed the trust of primary teachers."
Dublin northeast delegate Nora Hamill said that in September last her school had 113 pupils on the roll, one short of the 114 needed to retain a teacher.
"The school assumed Mary Hanafin would save the day as promised by bringing down class size this year. Come Budget day in December and our illusions were shattered. No change for this year, no money in the kitty.
"In our school it will mean putting two junior infant classes together to make a senior infant class of 35, including seven children for whom English is not their first language and children with diagnosed special needs and a wide variety of abilities."
More than 300 secondary schools could be forced to close as a result of the strike proposed by the TUI. Delegates voted in favour of a one-day strike yesterday evening unless the problem of discipline in classrooms is addressed immediately.