Teacher's PET

An insider's guide to education

• Much angst in the ASTI as the countdown continues to next week's ban on supervision. Gentle folk like Charlie Lennon and Catherine Fitzpatrick want to keep the schools open if at all possible, but the refuseniks (they hate being called "hardliners" or members of a "cabal"!) have another agenda. This is their attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of that terrible defeat on pay. In diplomatic-speak, school closures, "while regrettable, may be unavoidable".

Only one problem - what happens if the schools function normally with ex-teachers and gardai working away as supervisors for €34 an hour?

ASTI members will have lost out on more than €1,270 per year and efforts to revive the pay campaign will be dead in the water. Who is working out the strategy here?

• So much for the waves of openness, transparency and accountability sweeping through the education system. This week, TP endeavoured to find out some routine information from UCD - in the public interest, of course. The truly invasive queries were - when would your next governing body meeting be? And could we have the agenda please?

The response from UCD: No, No, No. Would someone please tell these people this is 2002 - wake up and smell the coffee!

• Well at least the students are open and accessible when it comes to talking to the fourth estate.... aren't they?

TP attempted last week to talk to one Aonghus Hourihane, president of the UCD students union, but the young student head was unavailable.

Instead, another young man, who described himself as an adviser (we are not making this up), said he would be handling all "routine queries" and any requests for Hourihane's precious time would have to be cleared by him first!

God be with the days when students were irreverent and revolting. The world was a safer place.

• Ed Walsh's brillant speech at the recent Irish Primary Principals Network conference in Galway got the media attention it deserved.

Walsh, the visionary ex- head of UL, talked of an education system that had not changed in a generation. He also had a sideswipe at the disproportionate importance given to Irish in the primary- school curriculum.

The response from the Department and the opposition spokepersons to this provocative contribution? Not a word in praise or in condemnation. So much for stirring public debate on education.

• Teacher's Pet would like to thank all of those people who have made contact by post, telephone and e-mail. Keep the information coming!

E-mail TP (in confidence) at teacherspet@irish-times.ie