ASTI no let up, just a change in strategy

School management has expressed concern, as have parent bodies, that pupils' education will not be disrupted further. The suggestion has been levelled at teachers that they care little about their students. Teachers care about their students and they are prepared to take a stand on Irish education and its value.

Teachers made a pay claim and found that the mechanism proposed to address their claim has the potential to undermine Irish education. Benchmarking is being applied to the public service to drive operational efficiency and to cap total public service expenditure. The public service is mainly administrative and the services delivered are, in the main, social and public services. They are, by and large, enabled outcomes derived from economic success.

Decision-makers are treating education as a social service. But they are missing the essential fact: education has primary input into economic success. It gives economic benefit. This has never been more the case than it is today when economic success is directly attributable to the "knowledge economy". Moreover, the process of education itself brings social benefit. The Government wants an education service based on demonstrable efficiency and operational effectiveness. The industrial world is suffering benchmark overload and this benchmarking of its nature produces a worldwide sameness. What is necessary is the strategic positioning of education. Education is the creation of a unique and valuable set of activities that sets us apart. Meanwhile, benchmarking is advocating more administration, more self-accounting, more paperwork, more mechanistic form-filling. The things that give energy to education are being closed down.

Rather than looking at operational efficiency, what is needed is a focus on strategic positioning, so that our learning processes and outputs enable us to deliver unique learning outcomes. The added value of education is to integrate a range of intelligences, thereby enabling the person to work with ambiguities and in a flexible environment. One of the unique qualities of Irish education is the significant tacit knowledge transmitted to the student through interaction with a broad curriculum.

A sustainable strategic position in education requires trade-offs to be made. These trade-offs must not be at the expense of the education process, the focus should be on keeping administrative tasks to the minimum. A working population capable of the thinking, agility and flexibility needs teachers who can deliver exceptional educational service.

Three things are now needed. Firstly, a level of pay that, as Garret Fitzgerald has pointed out in The Irish Times on April 7th, demonstrably reflects the high value society places on teachers. Secondly, as George O'Callaghan, General Secretary of the JMB has said, that the education process would have all the resources necessary. Thirdly, teachers need to work in ongoing real partnership discussions with management, parents, student representatives and the Department of Education and Science to have an ongoing, evolving consensus on education and through that to have a rolling strategic plan.

Central to this is society's perceived value of education. It is not just about Mary and Johnny staying in school beyond 16 years or worrying about the points they might achieve in the Leaving Cert. It is far deeper than that, although staying on in school and getting a Leaving Cert are of truly immense importance for Johnny and Mary. It is the type of education they get, the intrinsic ability to learn and re-learn.

At the beginning of its dispute the ASTI failed to articulate the true value to this country of its unique education process. So it was natural that parents saw no further than the issue of their own child losing school days. It was also natural that political and educational commentators took the uncompromising attitude that the ASTI must go into the PPF.

However, the problem lay in the ASTI having to take benchmarking on trust to deliver the pay claim and also in the potential of the process to undermine the unique activities embodied in the Irish education system.

What have teachers learned during this dispute? That parents are beginning to acknowledge the importance of having highly motivated and well-paid teachers. The JMB president, James Cassin, highlighted the fact that teachers have been held in high esteem. "There is a danger that teaching will not attract the best into its ranks. Should this happen, our pupils and school will suffer and it will not augur well for the future of this country," he said.

Teachers themselves are aware that Irish teaching outcomes have delivered and are delivering exceptional value to our students, our economy and our society.

I would take issue with commentators who say that the results of the recent ballot indicate that the ASTI is divided and without a mandate. Governments have taken the reins of office very successfully on as little as a 2 per cent margin and have had the country's full backing. The current Government parties don't even have an overall majority, but the Government serves its term and assumes it has the right to govern. That is democracy. It is untrue to say that the ASTI has achieved nothing in the last year. There is now broad recognition that teachers must be paid in line with other professional groups. Independent consultants Deloitte & Touche produced evidence of this which led the Labour Court to recommend that teachers receive a significant increase to restore parity.

The ASTI has now to take a leaf from its own book: to review and learn and relearn. What is important is to look at where all the players and partners in education are right now. In rejecting the Labour Court offer, the ASTI has put down a marker that it wants the restoration of parity with other professional groups. By voting not to re-impose a ban on cooperation with the examinations, the ASTI believes that other actions at its disposal will be sufficient to have its claim answered.

There is no let up in determination. Just a change in strategy.

Patricia Wroe is a member of the Central Executive Council of the ASTI.