FOR a newcomer to the scene, the annual Irish teachers' conferences are an extraordinary spectacle. The Minister for Education and her entourage - from the Secretary of the Department downwards - sweep into town to proclaim a package of past achievements and future promises. The Minister declares spending on education has increased by nearly 50 per cent in the past four years. Opposition education spokespersons and other politicians are much in evidence. The press devotes pages of largely uncritical coverage to the proceedings.

In few countries are teachers' unions treated by the powerful with such respect and ceremony. As the professor of education at University College Cork, Dr Aine Hyland, said in her address to the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland in Galway, the high status of Irish teachers is "the envy of our European colleagues".

That status is due, she went on, to "the relentless insistence of the teacher unions that salaries and conditions of employment be commensurate with the responsibilities of the profession". This is borne out by the latest published statistics from the OECD, which show Irish teachers' earnings consistently among the top half dozen in the advanced world.

It is also shown in the figures for the numbers trying to get into higher diploma courses in university education departments in Cork and Dublin. According to Prof Hyland, UCC this year has nearly 1,000 applications for 185 places on its H.Dip course, while the applications to Dublin universities are running at 1,400 for 165 places.

Yet the dominant atmosphere at the ASTI and other conferences this week was one of disappointment, anger and even fear. Part of this can be put down to the nature of such conferences and the minority of activist teachers who attend them. They are inevitably an occasion for letting off steam, and once a particular strong tone has been set - for example, outright opposition to the Education Bill - it takes a courageous delegate to get up and contradict it.

But the anger goes deeper. It was clear from the proceedings in Galway there was bitter disappointment that, after all the elaborate consultations of recent years, the drafters of Niamh Breathnach's Education Bill had not seen fit even to include a significant mention, let alone a proper definition, of teachers.

TEACHERS in the bars and the lobbies felt they had been devalued and marginalised as a profession by the Minister and her Bill. "We used to be grouped professionally with the priests and the doctors; now we're spoken of in the same breath as the gardai and the nurses," was one comment.

They were genuinely alarmed at some of the Education Bill's perceived shortcomings, notably of the proposed regional education boards. Ms Susie Hall, a teacher at Malahide Community School, spoke for many when she complained about the dangers of yet another level of bureaucracy; of feeling insulted that the Minister expected them to believe this new layer - with all its executives and offices - would not lead to significant extra costs; and of the risk that regionalisation would lead to Ireland becoming like Britain, with different educational standards in different areas.

"Why does a country with the population of greater Manchester need 10 education boards?", asked one delegate. Another pointed to teachers' fears that the kind of parish pump politicians who currently dominate the VECs - with their party affiliations and appetite for perks - will call the tune in the new boards.

If the education boards were alarming, the prospect of being systematically inspected for the first time for decades filled some teachers with terror. Teachers of 20 years' experience admitted they had rarely, if ever, seen an inspector. They pointed with trepidation to the Education Bill's phrase that inspectors should henceforth have "all powers necessary for the performance of their functions".

THE draconian spectre of the British system loomed large. Many teachers are convinced, despite constant reassurances by Niamh Breathnach and her officials, the outline plans for Whole School Inspection will eventually lead to heavy handed inspectors reports on individual teachers and British style "league tables" of school performance.

Other delegates objected most strongly to giving 16 year olds the right to appeal against practically every significant decision made by teachers, which they saw as a recipe for a disciplinary, legalistic and bureaucratic quagmire. They were annoyed too that the Bill's drafters had not seen fit to mention two elements dear to teachers' hearts: the widely admired but nonstatutory National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, and a proposed Teaching Council - which Ms Breathnach has now promised will be the subject of a separate piece of legislation.

"There is great individuality in Irish education. The range of schools, each with its own autonomy, gives parents a wide choice," said Mr Dermot Curran from Kilkenny, pointing to the six very different schools in his town as an example.

The new political controls envisaged by the Education Bill and the education boards could put that individuality and autonomy at risk. He thought much of the anger showed at the teachers' conferences could be explained by a feeling that they, as the professionals, were in danger of being pushed to the margins of the education system by a combination of "amateur" politicians and bureaucrats.