School managers have warned that secondary schools may have to close if teachers vote for a ban on supervision and substitution work. They say any plan to bring in parents or other non-teachers to perform these duties may not be feasible.
Mr George O'Callaghan, general secretary of the Joint Management Board, which controls 420 schools, said: "We will have to seriously contemplate closing schools if the teachers are not there. We don't want to . . . but the situation we're facing is not amenable to easy solutions."
Mr Michael Moriarty, general secretary of the Irish Vocational Education Association, said: "Any attempt to keep schools open presents huge difficulties at local level where managers must work with their staff on a daily basis. Managers must also give priority to the safety of students in schools. This cannot be guaranteed without the teachers."
Last year, schools were forced to close on health and safety grounds when the ASTI withdrew from supervision as part of its pay campaign. The Department of Education wants to see school managers making every possible effort to keep schools open, but managements insist this does not recognise the reality in many schools.
Mr O'Callaghan said any move to recruit parents or other non-teachers for supervision duties could severely damage relations between management and teachers. "We also face the difficulty of finding people to do this work and training them so they can maintain discipline in a school yard."
School managers say they cannot envisage any situation in which any non-teacher could perform substitution work in the classroom. School principals might be available to perform these duties but in most cases they were also members of ASTI.
Teachers are being offered £27 an hour to perform supervision/ substitution duties, for which they receive no payment at present.
The proposed ban on supervision is coming under fire from some members of ASTI, even those who strongly support the 30 per cent pay claim. One influential member said: "We are allowing ourselves to be side-tracked into a cul-de-sac on supervision."
Another said the union "could not cope with the ferocious public response" if schools were forced to close. "We are very vulnerable on the issue of not putting the £27 per hour offer out to a ballot," one senior member said.
Other members however strongly backed the ban. Many teachers are furious that the payment is not pensionable and that it is not at overtime rates.
School managers have renewed their appeal to the ASTI to allow members to vote on what they see as a good offer.
Most observers believe the ban on supervision will be supported by a strong majority of ASTI members in a ballot which begins shortly. The result should be known by Friday of next week.
Discussions with the INTO on supervision are still continuing as the issues are more complex in the primary sector. Its general secretary, Senator Joe O'Toole, said he still hoped to see some resolution of the potential industrial relations difficulties.
A leading parents' group has said it wants non-teachers to be recruited for supervision. Ms Barbara Johnston of the Catholic Secondary Schools' Parent Associations said £27 an hour for supervision was a decent offer which should be available to non-teachers. However, the association wants teachers to be paid the full overtime rate for substitution work.