Holding teachers' interests

The Teaching Council, which is being launched today, will promote teacher professionalism and set standards, writes Louise Holden

It's been 30 years since the idea of a teaching council was first mooted in Ireland and today the 37-member body finally gets its statutory seal of approval. The group was assembled this time last year, but only now does the council have teeth.

Council director Áine Lawlor sees the move as a vote of trust and confidence in Irish teachers, a chance for the profession to regulate itself. The Republic is the last among its neighbouring countries to bestow this honour on its teachers, but according to Lawlor the Irish Teaching Council is a more powerful agent than any of its sister councils in the North, in Scotland, in England or in Wales.

The idea of a teaching council is to promote teacher professionalism and set standards. How far a council is prepared, or allowed, to go in maintaining those standards depends on the breadth of its legislative remit. The Teaching Council Act, passed in 2001, granted wide-ranging powers including responsibility for the registration of teachers, the accreditation of training and professional development programmes in education and the investigation of complaints against individuals.

Based in Maynooth, the council has 37 elected and nominated members. These comprise 11 primary teachers, 11 post-primary teachers, two members nominated by colleges of education, two members nominated by third-level bodies, four nominated by school management, two nominated by parent associations and five nominated by the Minister for Education, including one Ictu and one Ibec representative.

With well over half the membership coming directly from schools, is there a risk that the council will be yet another arm of the already powerful teachers' union triumvirate?

"The council has no role to play in conditions of employment, salaries or other business that goes on between unions and the department," Lawlor assures. "Chairwoman Joan Ward has been very strong in maintaining the boundary between council and union matters. We have been working together as a group for a year now and so far no union agendas have come to the table."

The group has spent the last year preparing the ground for today's statutory imprimatur, and its first priority is to get the Teachers' Register up and running. This central database will store details of the qualifications and experience of every teacher in the country. For now, vetting information will remain the remit of the Central Vetting Unit in Thurles, Co Tipperary. The registration will provide the department with a central information resource on levels of teacher supply in the system.

The second pressing matter for the council is the drafting of professional codes. "This process is designed to make explicit the standards that have for many years been implicit in teaching," says Lawlor, who worked as a primary teacher and then a principal for 21 years before stepping onto the national education stage in 1996.

"These codes are aspirational - they don't represent rules and they are open to review. There will be opportunities for teachers, parents and other members of the public to have a voice in the drafting of these codes over the coming months."

Bringing the public eye into schools is a priority for Lawlor, who believes they have been fiefdoms for too long. "I feel strongly that many people do not understand what goes on in classrooms. We hope to bring the media into the classroom, perhaps through a documentary, and tell good news stories about education in the papers. The council will engage with the media. We have to examine how the world of the classroom fits with the wider worlds that children experience."

If teachers have not seen their work celebrated in the media, perhaps it is because some have resisted intrusion into their classrooms. How are some "old-schoolers" likely to respond to the idea of reality TV cameras?

"Some teachers are inherently shy," Lawlor admits. "Many are not accustomed to having other adults see them at work. It's a unique profession in that sense. That is changing now, there is a shift to a more collegiate approach."

Lawlor suggests that the classrooms some academics have described as "Balkanised states" are changing as many teachers have embraced professional development and all the new thinking that goes with it. "The traditional notion of the isolated teacher in the classroom is outdated," says Lawlor. "Teachers need to share their expertise with other professionals to find solutions and maintain and raise standards. An important part of our remit is to promote professional development and encourage teaching to take a mirror to itself. We have to retain the high standards of teaching in Ireland that have been lost elsewhere. If the standard drops, it's very hard to reverse that."

It is international common practice for newly-qualified teachers to spend their first year of teaching in a structured induction programme that timetables reflective activity and assigns mentors. That system has never developed here - at least not officially. Two pilot induction schemes, spearheaded by Maureen Killeavy of the School of Education and Learning in UCD and Dr Mark Morgan in St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, are now in operation in a number of counties. The council hopes to be informed by the evaluation of these programmes when establishing procedures to make formal induction a reality across the system.

The dirty work of the council lies in the murky zone known as "fitness to practise". Teachers who fall out of line will be dealt with by the council's Investigating and Disciplinary committees.

"If someone makes a complaint to the council about an individual teacher, our first responsibility is to ensure that due process at local level has been exhausted," says Lawlor. "If it has, and the Investigating committee deems the matter serious, there will be an investigation. The complainant will be obliged to complain in writing, and provide documentary evidence to back up the complaint. At that stage the Disciplinary committee gets involved and if found guilty, the teacher involved may be deregistered, suspended or referred for professional intervention. In the event of a complaint of criminality, it is my understanding that the action would have to be relevant to the individual's fitness to practise or would have to pose a threat to a young person to become a matter for this council."

The council has yet to be tested in this area (the Fitness to Practise commencement order hasn't come into effect yet) and Lawlor is speculating based on the experiences of sister councils. "One thing is clear," she insists. "Self-regulation means being accountable. We will not shirk our responsibilities in the investigation of complaints."