BULLYING of teachers by students, colleagues and parents must he addressed, the president of the Teachers' Union of Ireland told the 350 delegates at the annual congress in Ennis, Co Clare.
Reported incidents of bullying of teachers included physical aggression, continuous verbal aggression, false allegations, workplace bullying by colleagues and physical aggression by parents, Ms Alice Prendergast said.
"Indeed, since I took over as president I have been amazed at the number of calls I have taken from individual members who are being put under pressure by bullies. Just as we protect our students from bullying we must also protect our teachers," she said.
It needed to be recognised as a health and safety issue.
Ms Prendergast also expressed concern that lack of motivation among students might lead to increasing disaffect ion from school and a lack of willingness to accept behaviour limitations which appeared arbitrary.
Student dissatisfaction might sometimes be supported by equally disaffected and even aggressive attitudes from parents, she added.
Parents could not seek to promote the interests of their children without indirectly affecting the interests of other children. "We believe that schools and teachers must have regard to the collective wishes of parents, as expressed through representative structures, but individual teachers cannot be directly accountable to individual parents.
"The traditional practice of working hard to achieve good results at school, hence a good job, has little relevance for students who see rising levels of unemployment in their community, and who may not personally know any adult in regular paid employment," she said.
The effect on young people of watching large amounts of television, which might include unsupervised watching of violent material, needed to be investigated. Drugs, including alcohol, are increasingly playing a part in the culture of many young people, said Ms Prendergast.
"The `morning after' feeling is not conducive to active learning and indeed we have heard of cases where students are attending school high on drugs and unable to conform to normal discipline procedures."
The Department of Education guidelines on countering bullying fell short of what was required, she added.
The union is planning strike action at third level, over the failure by the Dublin Institute of Technology to fill outstanding lecturer 1 and 2 posts, according to the TUI president.
Agreement has been reached with all regional technical colleges but the DIT's "unique and different understanding of the agreement" was holding up implementation.
As late as last week a meeting between management and the TUI, chaired by Mr Sean Healy, tailed to reach agreement, said Ms Prendergast. The first strike will take place on Thursday, April 10th.
"This is the start of a series of industrial actions which will take place in the DIT, and while we have no wish to hurt the students in their last term, and before their examinations, we cannot allow a situation where one college management is holding up progress on talks for all the regional technical colleges around this country," Ms Prendergast told delegates.
If this did not succeed, TUI members in all colleges would engage in industrial action to ensure that the PCW talks were successfully concluded at third level, she added.
Delegates heard that there was a problem with the new levy system of funding for apprenticeships. The Revenue Commissioners had estimated that the compliance rate in 1995-96 was only 39 per cent.
"If the current difficulties cannot be resolved, it is possible that FAS will cease payments of allowances to apprentices during the off-the-job phases, or at best continue to pay these allowances but at a reduced rate," she said.
The implications for apprentices about to enter phases four and six could be disastrous, she said. It was time for all parties to get together and sort out the mess. Mr Jim Dorney, general secretary of the TUI, challenged the Minister for Education to "act now and restore pension entitlements lost through dispute action by teachers." It was a form of double jeopardy to lose both pays and pension rights, he said.
National teachers and secondary teachers have had pension rights restored, but it was not possible under the TUI scheme.
Under the PCW proposals, pension entitlements for TUI members are transferred from the Department of the Environment to the Department of Education, which makes it possible for the Minister for Education to fulfil the promise made in 1986 by her predecessor, Ms Mary O'Rourke, said Mr Dorney.
He estimated that the average TUI member had lost between seven and 10 days' pension entitlements through strike actions.