The Department of Education wants to minimise disruption to the school day by asking teachers to spend more time on training or upskilling outside their regular teaching hours.
The proposals form part of an action plan drawn up by management under the public sector pay agreement reached earlier this year with trade unions.
At present, much of teachers’ upskilling or continuous professional development takes place during the school day, which can lead to school closures or free periods for students at second level.
The reform plans state that management will “explore the potential” of providing further elements of teachers’ professional learning outside staff teaching hours or online. It says this could provide for more “consistent and effective delivery of and participation” in these sessions.
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Under the €3.6 billion pay deal, public service workers will receive rises of 10.25 per cent over a 2½-year period, up to the middle of 2026. In exchange, unions have committed to industrial peace and to engage with a “transformation agenda” for the public sector.
These discussions may prove heated given disputes between secondary teachers and the Department of Education over Junior Cycle reforms in recent years.
The timing of professional collaboration meetings outside the normal school day, in particular, threatened to escalate into a stand-off before the pandemic.
The new Department of Education reform plan linked to the current pay deal states that “all staff” will engage in a process to “explore balancing the totality of functions of staff in terms of contact [teaching] time, non-contact time, implementation of new initiatives and CPD [continuous professional development]”.
It says this engagement will take place with a view to making teachers’ professional learning compulsory.
In addition, teachers will be requested to engage in a review of courses eligible for extra personal vacation days. Under this scheme, teachers are entitled to additional holidays if they attend approved summer courses.
While some planned workplace changes are described as “exploratory” discussions, others are a condition of the pay deal. For example, the action plan states that teachers will co-operate with senior cycle redevelopment in line with a requirement in the pay deal to “maintain a well-managed, stable industrial relations environment which achieves industrial peace”.
Senior cycle reforms are already stirring up heated comment from the two second-level teachers’ unions.
Under these changes due across second-level schools from September 2025, students will be required to complete practicals or projects worth 40 per cent of marks from fifth year in subjects such as physics, biology and chemistry. Other subjects will follow suit in subsequent years.
The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) has warned that its acceptance and implementation of senior cycle reform is contingent on schools being properly resourced to implement the changes. The Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) wants the roll-out of reforms for three subjects – biology, chemistry and physics – to be deferred for a year due to a disagreement over the sharing of submissions arising from a public consultation on the reforms.
The action plan also states that teachers will engage with research into the effective use of professional time for teachers as provided for in the Junior Cycle framework. In addition, at primary level it says teachers will co-operate with the roll-out of the new curriculum and the phased implementation of related specifications, when finalised.
The action plan says this is in line with the commitment in the pay deal and the requirement to maintain a stable industrial relations environment.
The department’s action plan is one of many prepared by other Government departments, which are submitted to the Department of Public Expenditure at least one month before any scheduled pay increase under the pay agreement.
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