Teachers are being vilified, says ASTI

TEACHERS ARE being “vilified” and their terms and conditions of employment have never before been under such attack, the ASTI has said at its centenary education conference in Dublin.

ASTI general secretary John White told the meeting on Saturday that teachers were being vilified by “utterly incorrect statements about teachers’ sick-leave, hours of work, duties and responsibilities”. These statements were being “repeated ad nauseam by the same right-wing economists and commentators who were the cheerleaders for the operation of the raw market”.

He said teachers were facing worsening conditions, including pay cuts, a longer school day, a longer school year and changed requirements as to attendance.

“I want to say to the Government and the right-wing commentariat that when you damage teachers and the education system, you damage more than the education system, you damage the social good.”

He assured teachers the four unions were working together in this time of crisis but said the campaign against cuts would not be a short, sharp one.

“It will in all probability be an extended campaign over a number of years but we have the stomach for the fight.”

Mr White said it was a measure of the high esteem in which second-level teachers were held that Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney was addressing the conference on the contribution of teachers to the social good.

Mr Heaney told the gathering of more than 200 teachers that in years to come, their influence and effect would have consequences for the body politic.

“Ideally, the students who go out into society at the end of their school life will be the antibodies in the Ireland of the future,” he said.