Teacher's Pet

An insider's guide to education

Mooney and the Minister

Paul Mooney, the former head of the National College of Ireland, is still the talk of education after his lengthy Irish Times article Inside Third Level.

On his blog, Mooney has revealed how Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn rang him when the article appeared a fortnight ago.

Mooney wrote: “He [Quinn] phoned in person (no PA) and went through the arguments to fully understand them. We covered the ground, ‘agreed to disagree’ on a couple of the points and closed out. Nothing defensive. All good humoured. He was 100 per cent open and professional in the way that my contradictory views were questioned. This was a genuine effort on the part of a senior politician to understand, to probe, to question and to use criticism to develop a different understanding.”

The Mooney article was also the hot topic at last week’s meeting of the Higher Education Authority board. There was trenchant criticism of the piece but some board members said it was difficult to refute some of the arguments made by Mooney to a sceptical public.

The article has also provoked a huge response online. The most interesting, by some distance, is a strong rebuttal by TCD economist Brian Lucey on his blog at brianmlucey.wordpress.com

Lucey writes: “We do need a discussion: but facts, the application of modern forms of managerial analysis, logically coherent arguments and a holistic

perspective of society as consisting of many stakeholders would be a good start. This [Mooney] article fails on all levels.’’

Third-level staff from every college have also rushed to join in the chorus of criticism that greeted the Mooney article.

Here’s an awkward quesion

If all is fine at third level, how come Fergal O’Malley was able to hold down full-time lecturing positions in both Athlone Institute of Technology and NUI Galway from 1999 until 2007?

O’Malley, an engineering lecturer, earned €81,000 a year in Athlone and €65,000 a year in NUI Galway. During a Public Accounts Committee two years ago, members expressed astonishment that neither institution had noticed the situation over a 10-year period.

Brigid McManus, then secretary general of the Department of Education, acknowledged the rigidities in the contract for lecturers in the institutes of technology. They are required to lecture 16 hours a week. They will begin summer holidays on June 20th.

In a report to the committee, former comptroller and auditor general John Buckley said it was “disturbing that some lecturers have a belief that their obligations to an institute of technology are exhausted upon delivery of contract hours which are set in terms of a norm of 16 hours per week.”

UCD’s mystery donor

Congratulations to the UCD Michael Smurfit Business School. Last week it received €500,000 from a “mystery donor”. This will be used to fund 60 scholarships.

And congrats also to Loreto Secondary School, Balbriggan, which has no less than nine successful entrants into the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) for the 2012-13 academic year.

Is this a record ?

Hungry for a good read

Could the extraordinary success of The Hunger Games (right) have a Harry Potter-style impact on reading levels among teenagers?

Teachers report how the blockbuster movie is generating great interest in Suzanne Collins’s novel.

One teacher notes how one teen “who has hardly read a book while in secondary school is absorbed” by the book. Bring on the sequel!

Pre-conference whispers

The preteacher conference season has been unusually quiet this year with little in the way of controversy.

That said, Ruairí Quinn is certain to get a hostile reception from teachers at next week’s conferences about budget cuts, the threat to small schools and that “confusion” over the new school-building programme.

You can also expect some token resistance to those shocking pay cuts for new teachers, which will see them earn considerably less than more experienced colleagues.

The INTO will discuss a motion that future pay increases for members should be weighted towards new entrants who now earn about €29,000 compared to €40,000 two years ago.

But are older teachers willing to make any sacrifices to help young colleagues?