Every year the succession of teachers' conferences in the Easter aftermath brings educational matters to the top of the national agenda, where they belong. With the Dail empty and the courts vacant, the media descend upon the conferences seeking stories in an otherwise empty news week.

It is a time when the community hears the just concerns and frustrations of teachers at first hand. It is a time when the rest of us are treated to the realities of the education system and its shortcomings.

Although for much of the last 80 years school buildings, equipment and class sizes were sub-standard, teachers have been excellent. We have all passed through their system at some stage, and we are all aware of it. How they effectively propped up a system which was permanently underfunded until recently is an extraordinary feat.

I recall clearly that even in mid1997, when this Government came to office, we had to introduce supplementary estimates to U-turn the cuts in teacher numbers and the freeze on direct school funding which the previous administration had introduced in its last budget. In these supplementary estimates, the minister, Micheal Martin, set about a major expansion in educational funding that's really only beginning to bear fruit today.

There are about four times more school building projects under way today than four years ago, and the educational spend is up by 70 per cent.

In addition, 2,500 new teaching posts are being created, and average class sizes are being reduced across the board. Primary-class sizes are now at their lowest level. In a sense, the system today is only beginning to catch up with the existing excellence of its teachers.

For years, however, teachers dealt with these deficiencies behind classroom doors day in and day out, often without understanding from the people and the government. In a relatively poor Ireland, the dearth of adequate school buildings, equipment and pupil-teacher ratios must have stretched the will to pursue the teaching vocation to breaking point.

In the newly rich Ireland, we need to accept that finding the resources to put an end to these inadequacies is a top priority.

We must also ensure that those with a vocation to teach are well paid. As the Taoiseach this week plainly stated, we must accept that rewarding teachers well is an essential part of ensuring the long-term success of our schools.

A day after the Taoiseach made these comments, the Minister for Education and Science, Dr Woods, told the INTO, representing primary teachers, that their £40,000-plus pay target was "realistic". He was similarly forthcoming to secondary teachers. Addressing the ASTI conference, he said the Government would not dispute the Labour Court finding that members had a sustainable case for a pay increase.

Indeed, he went further and signalled his belief that the contentious benchmarking process would lead to substantial pay increases for teachers.

As one educational correspondent put it: "It was a case of `Read my lips - You are pushing an open door'."

ASTI members now know the Government has no objection in principle to a pay rise. In fact, they know the Minister for Education feels they will receive their pay rise through benchmarking. So what's the problem?

We are told it is benchmarking. I doubt it. Benchmarking is an enlightened and overdue process that simply compares jobs and pay rates in the public sector with jobs and rates in the private. It was agreed by the social partners to ensure that the public service can compete fairly to recruit, retain and motivate staff.

Benchmarking, in the context of teaching, aims to ensure that the job remains attractive to recruit, retain and motivate staff.

Teachers will obviously gain from it, as the majority of teacher unions seem confident they will. Gains from benchmarking are over and above those we are all receiving in PPF. There is nothing for ASTI to fear from benchmarking.

I FEAR the problem may run deeper than simply pay. Just as poverty is relative, so, too, are wealth and social status. There was a time not that long ago, for example, when the priest and the teacher were of central prominence in any neighbourhood in rural or urban Ireland. In just a couple of generations this status has altered greatly.

The rapid change from poor, essentially rural-based society to largely urban prosperity has occurred with unprecedented speed. The social change has been profound. The role of banks, politicians, media, priests, teachers and countless other professions and institutions has changed completely. The parish priest is no longer seen as the guardian of a community's morality.

With third-level education becoming the norm, the teacher is no longer necessarily the person with the most educational qualifications in the community. The teacher's employment conditions, once the envy of the working man and woman, today are now not as enviable when compared with the mind-boggling salaries one hears of in other jobs. The teacher's vocation in an understandably more materialistic society is unfortunately not what it once was.

The relative social value of the profession has declined greatly. My own view is that, as a people, we do not value them enough.

I honestly believe that for the first time government is awake to their needs. Society at large needs to follow. For example, only now, belatedly, are teachers receiving a far greater say in how their profession is run. Just last week the Teaching Council Bill was enacted. The establishment of such a council at last formally recognises the professional status of teaching.

It transfers responsibility for areas such as qualifications necessary for new teachers, accreditation of training courses and addressing disciplinary problems to the teachers themselves, working through the council. Similarly, only recently have teachers been allowed real involvement in curriculum development.

The signs are that benchmarking will deliver for teachers. Most teaching unions seem to accept that. Indeed, there is simply no other option. To reject benchmarking is to reject Social Partnership, the very basis of our economic and industrial relations success.

The very raison d'etre of bench marking in this context is to ensure that teachers' pay and conditions remain attractive.