Department shelves plan for teacher performance reviews

The Department of Education says it has no intention of conducting regular performance reviews of teachers and principals, despite admitting in internal documents that such a move would boost the quality of teaching.

In a briefing document prepared for Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan last July, department officials listed creating a system of teacher and principal appraisal under “priorities and main activities” for the period of 2014-2016 .

It noted: “Outside of the probationary period and cases where teachers experience professional difficulties, there is no procedure in the Irish school system whereby the competence and/or the standard of an individual teacher’s work are regularly and systematically evaluated within the school.”

Such a system was recommended by the OECD which has produced evidence suggesting “that appraisal systems for teachers and principals, strongly focussed on improvement and professional development, can play a beneficial role in strengthening teaching and learning in schools”.

However, in a statement this week the department said it had “no plans at present to introduce an appraisal system for teachers and principals”.

The proposal is understood to have been taken off the table until industrial relations improve between teachers and the department over the junior cycle reforms.

In the UK, not only are teachers subjected to annual performance reviews by school principals but from this year their pay will be linked to such appraisals.

The National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals introduced a pilot project last year in six Cork schools where teachers and principals engaged in peer observation and review.

Director Clive Byrne said response was positive from participants as there was no formal system at present for teachers to have a "professional conversation" with one another about classroom practices. "The aim is to make what is routine in other countries less threatening in an Irish context."

A 2008 OECD study showed the percentage of teachers in Ireland who had received an appraisal of their teaching, or feedback from their school principal, was the lowest of 24 countries surveyed.

Meanwhile, the department says it will be contacting schools which failed to respond to a survey on compliance with a new School Self-Evaluation (SSE) process.

Since the last academic year, all schools are obliged to engage “in robust self-evaluation with a focus on school improvement and accountability”.

Under the process, all schools are required to prepare SSE reports and school improvement plans and to provide summaries of these to the school community each year.

However, parents organisations say schools have been slow to provide such reports, and those available vary significantly in terms of quality and levels of transparency.

The department's inspectorate told The Irish Times it had issued a survey to schools in September 2014 to gauge the extent to which they were engaging with the SSE process.

By the end of September, responses had been received from 79 per cent of primary schools. Of these, 99.6 per cent reported they had engaged in the SSE process, and 95 per cent reported they had completed an SSE report and school improvement plan.

In post-primary schools the response rate was much lower at 57 per cent. But 97 per cent reported that they had engaged in the SSE process, 78 per cent reported they had completed an SSE report and 76 per cent reported they had completed a school improvement plan.

The department noted further responses had been received since and it would be contacting schools from which no returns had been received to complete the survey.

The teacher unions have announced two days of strike action - the first of which takes place on December 2nd - over the plan to have schools assess their own students at the end of third year in conjunction with a state exam.

For more see the Weekend section of tomorrow’s Irish Times