Bundoran diary: Kathryn Holmquist finds that some inspectors 'lacking in the milk of human kindness' are a bone of contention for delegates
When the inspector calls, newly-qualified teachers quake in their boots. Even those teaching for 35 years and more can still recall the trauma of inspector visits.
This has been one of the hot topics in the late night sessions and when it turned up on the conference floor, nobody held their fire.
"Some inspectors do not have the milk of human kindness," Ted Motherway, from Limerick, told delegates.
INTO general secretary, John Carr, refers to these milkless creatures as "Her Majesty's Inspectorate".
He accuses them of bullying, instilling fear and imposing expectations that are "out of touch with reality".
Behind the scenes, teachers have been discussing two particularly difficult types of inspector: "the leather brigade" and the "she wolves". Their destiny in life seems to be "making live miserable for young teachers," confided one principal.
INTO members in the North have been harbingers of doom, warning the systems of assessment in the UK have become so exacting that no one has any time to teach anymore.
Northern teachers actually have their assessments put up on the Internet for everyone to see and parents are required to fill in confidential questionnaires on teacher performance, which teachers never get to read.
In the Republic, schools inspection hasn't changed much since 1851. Most inspectors are supportive and fair, the teachers say.
However, "There is a minority of inspectors who see their role as a power trip and they create considerable upset and lowering of morale by their negative, critical behaviour or by their unrealistic expectations," stated Michael Kilgannon, from Ballinasloe, when he got his turn at the microphone.
And, allegedly, this dreaded minority are getting fiercer by the day. Most have fewer than 10 years teaching experience, which leaves many mature principals feeling frustrated that the "art" of teaching is being ignored in favour of the "science".
Individual inspectors demand exhaustive paperwork, where a week's lessons must be described "from the textbook" in such detail that young teachers spend all weekend writing up the reports and therefore have no social lives. (Unless you count the Bob Dylan songs at 5 a.m. in the hotel bar at the INTO conference.)
"Inspectors are taking the spontaneity out of teaching," believes Mary O'Rourke, a principal in Dundalk, Co Louth. The rigidity required by strict lesson plans is depriving children of a sense of educational adventure and creativity, she argued.
Meanwhile, young teachers are suffering from intimidation, pressure and stress.
At a social gathering in the early hours, a couple of - let us say - very senior inspectors who dared face the flak (with the help of the red stuff) complained that nobody ever wrote anything nice about their profession. So here's a story: a child with severe behaviour problems due to special needs was causing a young teacher to particularly dread the inspector's call.
The inspector, without having to be told, immediately gained the trust of the child who - it turned out - was the best behaved in the class and was the only one to get the inspector's coveted gold star.
The grateful young teacher was then more able to get the coveted "satisfactory".
Nobody was saying that kindly and sensitive inspectors were non-existent, but as with everything else, it is the nasty exceptions that get the publicity.
Peter Darcy, from Drogheda, Co Louth, complained that just like 20 years ago, when he addressed an INTO conference on the same subject, teams of inspectors were still descending on schools with military precision, but "with no knowledge of local circumstances".
Déjà vu isn't all that unusual at teachers' conferences, I'm beginning to realise. Like unannounced inspection visits, teacher shortages have been on the agenda since 1980 and still are.
At the end of the day, the INTO passed a motion to enter into talks with the Department of Education and Science to demand that inspectors not only be considerate and sensitive, but also consistent in their demands.
They are very sensitive souls, these teachers.
However, considering the teacher shortages, I suppose we should be glad we have them or else there would be nothing to inspect.