Rookie teachers shouldn't tremble when an inspector calls

Teaching Matters: A fortnight ago I went to a union meeting where the issue of how some inspectors are treating newly qualified teachers came up on the agenda, writes Valerie Monaghan

Several teachers reported how some inspectors are overly demanding. But one teacher told the meeting how, in her school, an inspector told a newly qualified teacher that when it comes to managing children in the classroom, "fear goes a long way". I must say that left me stunned.

This suggestion is a direct contradiction of the Department's own rules which demand that teachers govern pupils through "their affections and reason and not by harshness or severity". But it also, perhaps, captures why many newly qualified teachers are describing their dealings with some inspectors in terms of fear.

If this is how one inspector is advising the teacher to manage the children, then I wonder if the same approach is being used to manage the new teachers.

Every primary teacher, after graduation from college, is on probation for a year. This is no different to many other jobs where new recruits have their work and their suitability for the job assessed. In primary teaching it involves several visits from the inspector; the teacher's written documentation is examined and teaching observed before a report is written on the subject's fitness to teach.

Many people might remember from their own school days being told by their teacher that the cigire was coming to examine their school work. What pupils didn't know was that the inspector was probably coming to examine the competence and skill of the teacher. And whatever bribery (or probably fear in days gone by) the teacher might have used on the children to behave and answer up on the day was nothing to what the poor young teacher was feeling about the impending visit.

Indeed, the fear factor that was the "cigire" is the stuff of Irish education folklore. Nearly 100 years ago Catherine Mahon, the first woman president of the INTO, reported that "the one unerring test by which the pupils always recognise an inspector is that he does not shake hands with the teacher. Every visitor, high or low, from the King's deputy to the parent of the newest scholar, and from the Cardinal to the youngest curate, walks in with outstretched hand and kindly word of greeting to the teacher. The one exception is the inspector."

Writing in 1959, T.J. O'Connell, a former general secretary of the INTO, tells the tale of how the Rules for National Schools stated that all visitors should be admitted and received with courtesy by the teacher, but that occasionally unscrupulous people misused this privilege by pretending they were inspectors.

A case came before the courts in which one such individual visited a convent school. One of the nuns grew suspicious and rang the gardaí, who it turned out had been looking for him for some time for certain offences. When the nun was asked in court how she knew he wasn't an inspector, she replied, "He knocked at the door before entering".

These stories give a flavour of relations between teachers and inspectors in the past. I found it hard to believe that some of it is making a comeback.

I want to stress that the teachers with whom I spoke recently were not levelling these charges at every inspector.

Many are supportive, fair and make a positive contribution to the development of newly qualified teachers - and indeed experienced teachers - without being a pushover. I also have to say that in my 25 years of teaching I have never met "a bad one", and I know of other teachers who say the same.

My INTO colleagues also tell me that officials in the Inspectorate are held in very high esteem. But their positive approach is not trickling down to the classroom. Sadly, it seems that many new teachers are in fear of their inspectors. The upshot is that they are being swamped in a tide of paperwork and unfair, unreasonable demands. Other newly qualified teachers

tell how inspectors come in and demand that they teach in a particular way, which is completely contrary to the ways in which they were prepared in college.

We now have a situation where some young teachers are spending more time actually writing notes and reports and compiling pupil records than they do actually teaching. I personally know of one young teacher who is just hanging in there this year and wants to quit already. And it has nothing to do with the children.

I have no difficulty with probation or professional accountability, and neither has any primary teacher. But what I think must go together are fair and balanced accountability measures and appropriate support measures that help newly qualified teachers to get a good start in their careers.

There is very little help available for teachers in the first years of teaching. The principal is supposed to guide and mentor the new teacher, but that ignores the fact that most principals teach all day and rarely if ever get a chance to spend time in the classroom of a new teacher.

Some employers, as part of probation, offer advice, guidance and support to people new to a job. It's called investing in people, or human resources, and it's seen as part of education or training. But this issue will not go away. The inspection and evaluation of work is not the issue. A bit less fear would go a long way.

Valerie Monaghan is principal of Scoil Chiarán National School, Glasnevin, Dublin