It helps give you a more complete picture of children...

The only delegate to argue in favour of yard duty at the recent INTO conference in Galway was Colm O hAnluain, a teacher at Scoil Ui Riada in Kilcock, Co Kildare. He believes that it's an important aspect of a teacher's job. Although in the minority, his views do echo the concerns of teachers who worry about the level of care that paid supervisors would provide.

Yard duty at lunch-time, he said, is "valuable time where a teacher can see the children in their care in a different milieu and get a more complete picture of them."

Patrolling the yard, says O hAnluain, is a chance "to observe the bullied child or a lonely, friendless child or the child who has not yet learned to play in a reasonable fashion.

"The shy child in class may be the centre of attention in the yard and the talkative child in class could be left out of many yard. All of these things will inform the teacher as to how to plan the class - and this would be lost if a yard supervisor were employed. As professionals we should welcome as much information as we can to formulate courses of action that ought to inform us about the children in our care."

A teacher in the yard offers a sense of continuity and security to the children, he says. During lunchtime a teacher is still practising the profession.

That said, O hAnluain believes that, after yard duty, teachers should be allowed a lunchtime of their own. "It's often difficult to go from a very active yard to class and start to teach a lesson having had little time to calm down and reflect on the lesson in hand."

He accepts that "having up to 230 children in your care for 30 minutes, watching out for accidents etc, can be stressful. But yard time is as important as class time - to me they are of equal importance where all the children of all age groups learn to play together as we do in the world outside school."