An insider's guide to education

Teacher's Pet: Already feeling some teacher conference fatigue?

Spare a thought for the Minister, Mary Hanafin, and her entourage who are midway throughthe eight education conferences they will attend in five weeks.

Count them up. There are the three teacher unions, the parents' conference later this week, the school managers' conference next week. Oh, not to mention conferences earlier this month for teaching sisters and community and comprehensive schools. And then there is the Irish Vocational Education Association in Bundoran, Co Donegal next month.

Phew! So, busy days then for speechwriters in the Marlborough Street bunker? Surprisingly not. Apparently, the Minister is quite happy to speak without notes to some conferences. Other politicos please copy!

* Fair play, as Podge and Rodge might say, to Asti presidential candidate John Molloy.

While some candidates rabbit on about their love of yoga in their election literature, Molloy goes to the heart of the matter.

The main issue facing the union? Molloy points to the level of apathy among members. He reckons there are no more than 400 active members in the union from a membership of some 17,000.

To prove his point, Molloy points to the scandalously low turnout in the recent ballot on a return to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu). Some 2,000 members were entitled to vote in four key Dublin branches - south west, south 2, north west and Fingal. And how many bothered to vote? Would you believe a total of 80 members?

*In old pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland, teachers spent the Easter holidays giving grinds or scouring the DIY shops for bargains.

All has changed, changed utterly. The word from the staffrooms is that an veritable army of teachers has left the country for the Easter break. The two hot spots, apparently, are New York and the Canaries.

It makes you admire those teachers who give up a week of their Easter holidays to attend this week's conferences.

*t has to be said . . . RTÉ's Getting it Right series for Leaving Cert students is an outstanding production.

The word from teachers and students is that this is an unmissable assistance to their studies. But RTÉ need to do more to tell the kids about it.

*Best wishes to Seán McCann of the Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools (ACCS), who is stepping down after 10 distinguished years as general secretary.

*Don't pay too much attention to those tales about a united teachers' union within a week or two. Yes, ASTI's return to the Ictu tent has helped to improve relations between the three. But our guess is that it could be some time yet before any deal is done.

A TUI/ASTI merger might make sense, but are the INTO anxious to share the bed? Something tells us the INTO like their own independent republic up on Parnell Square. Or is that just our imagination?

[ teacherspet@irish-times.ie ]