Primary school head gives report a cautious welcome

Mr Michael Mangan is principal of St Patrick's primary school in Drumcondra, Dublin, which has more than 500 pupils. He gave the benchmarking report a cautious welcome yesterday.

"The initial reaction is that we seem to be getting the higher range of increases, but it will take time to digest the report," he said. The report recommended that teachers get a pay increase of 13 per cent, while the allowances paid to principals and deputy principals would increase by as much as 17.6 per cent in some cases.

Including the PPF wage increase and the 2 per cent payment to counter inflation, teachers would be getting a pay rise of around 30 per cent, Mr Mangan said. "That's what ASTI was looking for at the start."

He welcomed the fact that teachers would reach the maximum salary scale two years earlier under the deal and he was also pleased that the focus on performance-related pay seemed to have reduced. "The report acknowledged that performance-related pay was not necessarily appropriate in some areas of the public service. It's very, very difficult to measure what a teacher does. You cannot go by individual test results of children."

If greater flexibility was sought from teachers, that would not be a problem for the primary school sector, he said.

"We are introducing a new curriculum and we'll have three or four new subjects by the end of the year. We have co-operated with new computers, drugs education, RSE. There is a huge amount of flexibility."

However, he was disappointed that the process did not remove the disparity between the allowance paid to primary and second-level principals.

Under benchmarking, primary school principals would get an allowance of between €7,544 and €24,129, but their second-level colleagues would get between €7,544 and €34,414.

"We do a pretty similar job, with the same stresses, so why the difference?" he said.

"The big thing now is how quickly do we get it?" If it was integrated into a new pay deal, inflation would eat up the pay rise. "It must be paid out as quickly as possible."