Strike called by teachers' union in Cork and Clare

All the primary school principals in Co Clare and in the Bandon and Bantry branches of the INTO in Co Cork will strike today as part of a State-wide campaign. They want to highlight the increasing difficulties of principals who have full-time teaching duties.

Over 250 primary school teachers are striking in the first action of the campaign to highlight this issue.

Teaching principals must teach and manage their schools without any formal back-up or support. Approximately 75 per cent of schools in the country have principals with full-time teaching duties. Also "many of these schools do not have the services of caretakers or secretarial support and these duties fall to the principal to carry out", according to the INTO.

The aim of the union's campaign is to highlight "the impossibility" of principals who must continue to teach and manage a school without this additional support. They continue to experience difficulties, the union says "while a variety of changes are taking place in schools such as the implementation of the revised curriculum, and the introduction of information technology".

The INTO says it is "seeking to have the recommendations of the report on the role of the teaching principal implemented".

A letter of protest will be handed in to the Department of Education and Science office in Ennis, Co Clare, at 8.30 a.m. They will then travel to picket the Department's offices in Cork at noon. They will then take part in rally at Neptune Stadium at 3.30 p.m., where they will be joined by other teachers from the Cork area.

Decisions on further industrial action as part of this campaign will be considered at the next meeting of the INTO executive this Friday.

A spokesman for the Department of Education and Science says 13,000 students will be effected by this "unnecessary action". He points out that the report from the committee established by the Minister to review the role of principals "has not been formally presented and it seems unbelievable that a union would take action like this before it has been presented. The most natural thing in the world would be that they would wait for the report. This is the second time this year that strike action has affected (primary) students", he said.

The National Parents Council - Primary, is also concerned about this issue, as Con Lynch, principal of Rylane National School in Co Cork and vice-chairman of the council, explains. "We would hope to take part in talks before the strike goes ahead, " he says. "In smaller schools, children being taught by teaching principals are not receiving their full entitlement of time," he says. "In the smaller schools the principal is persistently interrupted but the demands of managerial and curricular leadership functions. This disruption is very substantial."