Sir, - There has been a lot of focus on education in the media recently. However, none of it has focused on the plight of the teaching principal in national schools. Consider his/her situation.
He/she has a huge and bewildering array of tasks and responsibilities:
1. To lead a class, or more likely multiple classes.
2. To organise and supervise the workload of other teachers.
3. To organise and supervise the workload of FAS workers or other ancilliary staff.
4. To liaise and meet with parents.
5. To organise and decide what to do with disruptive pupils.
6. To organise and do a share of yard duty which, in a small school, comes up quite frequently.
7. To meet with every visitor to the school from the photographer to the inspector.
8. To attend meetings of the parent/teacher association and to carry out many of its decisions.
9. To attend meetings of the school board of management and to carry out many of its decisions.
10. To keep the school roll books in order.
11. To open the post each day and to attend to it.
12. To attend to any emergency (eg the alarm going off) outside normal school hours.
13. To oversee extra-curricular activities such as football, swimming or music.
14. To oversee minor building work, maintenance of the school boiler etc.
15. To see that the school cleaner is doing a good job.
16. To develop a school plan.
17. To see that the new curriculum is being introduced and implemented.
18. To see that the Relationships and Sexuality Programme is being introduced and written up.
19. To source finance for computers and to introduce them to the school.
20. To see that the school is adequately supplied with Art and PE equipment, etc.
This is not a comprehensive list but it gives a flavour of the many responsibilities where the buck will always stop with the principal. It is fair to point out that, in all schools, principals will get support for their myriad of tasks from other people like the vice-principal, teachers, other staff, parents and the board of management. Nonetheless, the huge array of tasks frequently lead to serious ill health and early retirement for many teaching principals.
Schools with teaching principals operate with other handicaps. For example, they do not have proper secretarial support. Adequate secretarial support depends on the luck of it being provided through FAS, increasingly unlikely in this Ireland of nearly full employment. What is going to happen if, as predicted, FAS is abolished? From whence will secretaries, classroom assistants and caretakers come when this happens?
In response to this letter, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation will say that it campaigned for an improvement in the situation of teaching principals. True, but sadly, as an INTO member, I have to say that our union was slow to mount such a campaign and much too ready to accept an inadequate offer from the Department of Education.
Most principals in Irish national schools are teaching principals. For their sakes, for the sakes of the pupils in their classrooms, for the sakes of other pupils, staff and parents in such schools this impossible situation must be sorted out. Otherwise, the crisis developing will deepen to the extent that no teacher will agree to take on such a job. - Yours, etc.,
Robert Dowds, (Teaching Principal in a National School, February 1998 to September 2000), Castle Park, Clondalkin, Dublin 22.