This week, 1,000 school managers will gather in Killarney to discuss principals' workloads and the vanishing school year, writes John Downes

From his position at the head of the Joint Managerial Body (JMB), George O'Callaghan is arguably as well placed as anybody to outline what it is really like to be at the coalface of the Irish second-level education system.

His organisation, whose annual conference begins tomorrow, represents the majority of second-level school managers here. The JMB is planning to launch a major piece of research on the workload of the second-level school manager, providing a useful snapshot of the realities of working within the second-level system.

Faced with huge increases in the demands placed on them by a "raft" of recent legislation, it indicates that many principals simply do not have the time to do their job properly, O'Callaghan says.

"Legislative change has made a huge impact on their workload. We cited I think 16 different pieces of legislation that have impacted on principals' workload over the last number of years which didn't exist 10 years ago," he explains. "One of the most significant things that emerged from the survey is they don't have enough time to do the job. They need to be freed up."

"What this survey has shown for us is that the principals have only time for an administrative role and very little time for their leadership role . . . they try to make time for it as much as possible, but all the other urgent pieces of business keep getting in the way."

O'Callaghan is understandably reluctant to be seen to criticise Minister for Education Mary Hanafin, a relatively new Minister who he says has demonstrated a "refreshing willingness" to meet with the education community - and to engage in debate and discussion on the issues affecting the education system here. The Minister has also shown that she can battle to secure extra funding for his members when sitting at the Cabinet table, he believes.

But an increase of €26 per student in the capitation grant paid to voluntary second-level schools, contained in this year's Budget, while a "step in the right direction", is nowhere near the €130 which his association had sought. Similarly, he remains unsure whether her recently revealed plan to look into ways of streamlining the administrative burden on second-level school principals is enough in itself.

"Our view would be that all that is well and good and would be welcome if it is possible to do it. But we don't think that goes far enough in dealing with this issue," he says. "The legislation makes critical demands on people. And you can't set aside the terms of the legislation. So creating efficiencies in the operation of the Department, while it might be a step forward, will not deal with that particular issue."

With this in mind, the JMB intends to call for an administrative assistant to be appointed to every second-level school principal. This could be done for O'Callaghan's members at an estimated cost of €2 million to €3 million, he says.

It is also difficult to escape an impression in talking to O'Callaghan that, while open to the possibilities which new Government initiatives might offer, he has seen far too many of them to become overly enthusiastic when they are announced.

Too often, reports and recommendations end up simply gathering dust on ministerial shelves. Even worse, in the rush to implement sometimes ill-thought-out plans, it is his members who are expected to take up the slack.

Nowhere is this attitude more evident than in O'Callaghan's approach to what is arguably the Minister's flagship initiative so far: the task force on student behaviour at second level. While he has been impressed with the way in which the task force has gone about its business to date, he says the JMB is adopting a "wait and see" approach to what it will achieve.

As with all such initiatives, the key is whether the recommendations of the task force are properly implemented and resourced, he believes. "In terms of calls to our office looking for advice and support in dealing with student discipline matters, obviously the first thing we have to say to the school is any action you take must be underpinned by the concept of due process. That is a good thing," he says.

"But due process does mean that the mechanisms for dealing with acts of indiscipline get slowed down . . . The result of that is that the disciplinary procedure or the mechanism for applying a code of behaviour is slowed down significantly. It probably sends a signal to other students in the school that the sanctions for breaches of discipline won't follow rapidly, if they follow at all."

Parents also have a real role to play in taking responsibility for the actions of their children, O'Callaghan believes.

"Very often the parent becomes focused on the rights of his or her own child . . . if the school is having to change their way of dealing with situations in recognition of greater rights on the part of students, then that creates further responsibilities on parents to recognise that schools have work to do in this area," he believes. "And this requires more co-operation on the part of some of them. This isn't an issue for every parent, it's about some parents. But again it's about the climate in the school."

Yet another major issue which O'Callaghan says will emerge at this week's conference is how to address the continuing erosion of the school year. On paper at least, there are 167 teaching days in the secondary school year. But despite the existence of a standardised school year, in-service training for teachers and the oral and practical examinations eat into this time significantly, he believes.

With the other management bodies, the JMB has made an approach to the Department of Education, the State Examinations Commission and the third-level institutions - which hold open days during term time - with a view to curbing this reduction of the school year. Controversially, one way in which the JMB believes this could be achieved might be to pay teachers to hold oral examinations outside term time - perhaps during the Easter holidays.

The reaction of the teaching unions to such proposals remains to be seen. But as the JMB, and O'Callaghan, face into this week's conference, one thing seems certain: given the changes Irish society has witnessed in recent years, school managers will have plenty to talk about.