Taking a principled stand on issue of teacher evaluations

Teaching matters:Many column inches have been devoted to the issue of teacher performance after that leaked report earlier this month.

According to the Department of Education, boards of management - acting on advice from principal teachers - should suspend or dismiss teachers for professional underperformance.

In response, John Carr of the INTO went straight into the fray, calling the proposal "deeply flawed and unworkable", and describing it as passing the buck from the inspectorate to the principal. He called it unfair and unjust to principals who are already at breaking point.

Despite some rather glib comments about who should assess under-performing principals, the issue provided a clear insight into why so many primary teachers - many of them no doubt with huge leadership potential - are unwilling to go forward for the position, and why many of those now in the job would "hand back the keys" of the school if they could.

The fact is, this particular proposal is not "a one off" but part of a long-standing Department policy to off-load duties and responsibilities.

Those of us who have been around for a while remember an era when the Department of Education was one of the most centralised in the country. In

those days, permission of the Department had to be obtained, in advance, for any purchase, repair or appointment, no matter how minor.

That was before the 2000 Cromien Report spelled out a process of decentralisation for the Department - and by that I'm not talking about moving Marlborough St to Tullamore, Mullingar and Athlone. Cromien was a blueprint for how the Department should divest itself of significant duties, responsibilities, workload and administration.

The report is littered with phrases describing the Department and those who worked there that justified this move. It talks about "frustration among staff", "enormous volume of work", "hampered by antiquated structure of the Department", "much time and effort in reactive activity" and "new schemes arising haphazardly".

But so successful has the Department been with this creeping decentralisation that all of these phrases now apply to principals in schools. And the main reason for this is that although the report recognised that additional burdens would require extra supports for schools, these have yet to reach schools. Even where something has been done, it has been so half-hearted that many of the required supports are only nominally in place.

A classic example of Cromien's devolution is the Summer Works Building Programme. Builders, architects, engineers and everyone else who works on one of these projects are well paid. The school principal doesn't get an additional red cent even though this work is carried out during holiday time. Who else is required to work during their holidays for no pay?

And anyone who tells me that a principal or someone from the school to oversee the project doesn't have to be there clearly has never even had a house extension done! Someone has to keep a watching brief on the project as it moves along.

So, thanks to Cromien, we now have principals acting as unpaid building project managers in schools during their holiday time. Some principals have done this every year for the last four years!

Now we have the suggestion that principals should take the place of the inspectorate of the Department and sit in judgement on teachers' professional competence. Clearly those who dreamt up this plan forgot that three out of every four principals in primary schools teach full time.

It is one thing for a principal to form a general or preliminary judgement about how teachers are performing. Principals do this regularly in many different ways. But holding a general impression is one thing. It is quite a different matter to have to defend a report to a Board of Management that may result in someone's suspension or dismissal.

In such a high-stakes situation, the basis for such a report would need to be very solid. How are principals supposed to do this when they have their own classes to teach all day? What training do they have for this proposed assessment role? Without such training, any judgements are likely to be successfully challenged.

There is no doubt that procedures for assessing alleged teacher underperformance need to be modernised. This has been accepted by all sides. But modernisation usually has connotations of progress or improvement. Not by any stretch of the imagination can this proposal be described in those terms.

All it has done is exposed yet again why so few teachers want to be principal teachers. Government underfunding means much time and effort goes on local fundraising. Most principals lack even basic office space in which

to work and sufficient secretarial support to run a modern school. And increasingly, they find themselves having to front up at local level to explain government failures and underfunding to parents.

This proposal has done little more than expose two fundamental flaws in our education system. The first is that principal teachers are already run ragged! The second is that no one in the Department apparently recognises this.

Did anyone in Marlborough Street seriously expect any principal to accept this extra responsibility on top of everything else for a daily allowance that in most cases is less than €14 after tax?

Aidan Gaughran is a member of INTO's Education Committee