Management revolution in schools

THE BELL rings for lunch break and the students pour into the yard the teachers scatter towards the staff room to get a well earned snack and the principal wraps himself in his overcoat and marches out to supervise the milling hordes.

This only happens in a minority of second level schools, it should be emphasised, but it does happen. The vast majority of teachers undertake yard and corridor supervision and a very tedious job it is but they do so on a voluntary basis. Most are not required to do so and can refuse or withdraw the favour at any time with the support of their union.

This is one of the issues which the productivity element of the talks on teacher pay/early retirement is designed to deal with. The deal is seen as revolutionising promotional structures and providing a coherent middle management team in many schools for the first time.

Up to now there has been a very loose management structure in most schools. The principal is assisted by a vice principal in most schools. But vice principals also have teaching duties ranging from full time in national schools to from eight to 12 hours in second level schools. This does not leave much time for management and administrative work.

Traditionally in Catholic secondary schools the principal was a member of a religious order and the vice principal a lay person. This resulted in a very trade union based approach to the job by vice principals, putting in only the exact 22 hour teaching week with no obligation, for example, to be in attendance in the school during the Junior and Leaving Cert exams.

It was only in a memorandum issued in 1993 that it was agreed that newly created vice principals in secondary schools would be in attendance outside of normal school hours. The previous document specifically stated that such attendance could not be a condition of appointment and this still applies to those appointed under the old terms. Many older vice principals do, of course, attend on a purely voluntary basis. But some school principals are left to run the school on their own during exam time.

The problem is compounded by the fact that vice principals in national and secondary schools are not appointed on the basis of merit or suitability to the job, but on seniority. The same applies to the layer of A' and B' post of responsibility holders. Effectively, for vice principalships and posts it is muggin's turn. There is no incentive to work hard or prove yourself," as one teacher puts it, no point in being ambitious. All you could do was wait to move into a dead man's shoes."

A principal could be lucky and get a good person on the other hand the next in line could be totally unsuited to the job.

To make matters worse, in secondary schools the duties of post holders could up to now only be decided after the appointment. The post is often tailored to the individual rather than vice versa. Thus the Department of Education could not draw up a specific management structure for schools, outlining which management functions post holders were expected to undertake.

Posts of responsibility were originally agreed as part of a teachers' pay deal and this, plus the allocation by seniority, led to a tendency to view them as another increment in the salary scale rather than as a promotional route to management responsibility.

For post holders there is the problem that they are allowed no reduction in their 22 hour teaching load to compensate for the extra work involved. Only in community/comprehensive and VEC schools is the teaching load of A' post holders reduced to 18 hours.

Despite the restrictions, most teachers perform important duties as part of their posts and put in voluntary extra hours. There is usually a post with responsibility for exams, for example, and in many schools there is an A' post holder as year head for each year group and a B' post holder as class teacher. But there is no defined structure. One school could differ completely from the next.

All of this has made the operation of a proper middle management structure in national and secondary schools very difficult.

In vocational and community/ comprehensive schools, the vice principalships and posts are filled on merit, in vocational schools they are advertised within the VEC area, in community/comprehensive schools within the school. The duties are spelled out in the advertisement. This has resulted in a much better defined management structure in those schools.

In Catholic secondary schools, when principalships were held exclusively by the religious, management was seen as something which the religious undertook and from which lay teachers felt and often were excluded.

WITH the huge growth in lay principals, however, the burden of the work of a principal has become more apparent and principals, through organisations such as the Secondary School Principals Association, have been complaining about lack of back up and demanding higher pay to compensate for the work involved. In addition, the many changes in the education system have been making school management a much more complex business.

The allocation of posts is another bone of contention, particularly for national schools. They are allocated on the basis of points per pupil, with older pupils attracting much higher points than younger ones. Thus a secondary school with 600 pupils would be entitled to far more posts than a national school with 600 pupils. This has left national teachers with very limited access to promotional posts.

Other problems which schools have faced in relation to management and efficient running have included the absence of an early retirement scheme for burnt out teachers.

There has also been the nagging problem of teachers whose professional performance has been under par, but for whom there was no route out of teaching. Other problems included a ban on parent teacher meetings outside of school hours and the absence of a requirement that second level teachers substitute for absent colleagues though, like much else, it is often done on a voluntary basis. Though in VEC schools substitution is specifically banned by the TUI. The insistence that teacher in service training be undertaken within existing teaching time was also eating into the school year, with some schools having to close for in service.

Teachers had problems too. Those of them who had trained in earlier two year courses were paid less than their colleagues who had undertaken degree based training, and teachers with a degree plus H.Dip earned more than those who had undertaken their training as an integral part of a four year degree programme (as happens in the University of Limerick). And there were problems for part time teachers.

It is against this background that the deal being worked out as part of the early retirement package is being seen as a revolution in school management" by some participants in the talks. (See details in panel.)

In the White Paper, the Minister for Education promised a major reorganisation of middle management in schools" believing that such a structure will give more control over their own affairs to teachers.

(Though to an extent it is formalising existing voluntary commitment.)

Much of the money in the £60 £70 million deal is going on improving the post holder structure creating more posts, paying more money for such posts and increasing the pay of principals and vice principals. This is in return for agreement on a coherent promotional/ management structure in schools, with post holders undertaking defined responsibilities though whether the teaching load of post holders is to be reduced is unclear.

Early retirement, shortening the pay scale and providing equal pay for teachers trained in different modes are designed as incentives for teachers to agree to parent teacher meetings and lunchtime supervision, giving an extra 15 or so hours per year for such work.

PROVIDING for early retirement for inadequately performing teachers is also, a major breakthrough, particularly for parents who had long found themselves frustrated on this issue. But it will be a relief to the vast majority of teachers who are capable and hard working and for whom what to do with stressed out colleagues has long been a dilemma.

The deal is still very hazy, with much of the detail yet to be agreed and spelled out. While there is clearly a lot in the deal as worked out so far for school managements, the Department of Education and parents, teacher union officials see it as opening up a whole new promotional structure for their members, with a clear route to the top being made available for ambitious, hard working young teachers.

There is a chance to become real partners in management," says one.