It was like old times at the teachers' conferences this week with the issue of pay again pushing its way to the top of the agenda after some years of relative calm on the industrial relations front. The demand by teachers for a greater share of the current economic prosperity should surprise no one: as some of their leaders acknowledged during the week, teachers paid a price for settling early in negotiations on the Programme for Competitiveness and Work (PCW). Other key public sector workers including nurses and gardai were able to extract a better deal, as the Government moved the goalposts in the PCW and rewarded other sectors for specific productivity deals. The sense of frustration in the teaching profession is understandable. Many of their contemporaries in comparable jobs in the private sector enjoy shareholdings, generous perks and/or incentive payments while those in the public sector enjoy overtime payments and/or can look forward to a windfall on flotation. Teachers enjoy long holidays but little else in the way of perks. ASTI delegates were told this week that the relatively low initial salary for graduates and the long incremental scale make it increasingly difficult for young teachers to secure mortgages. To compound this sense of frustration, teachers at both primary and second level are taking on a bewildering range of new burdens and responsibilities.
The case made by teachers for a pay increase is not without merit. But if the teachers want some of the benefits enjoyed by the private sector, they must also learn to accept some of the disciplines which are taken for granted by other workers, principally the whole notion of being subject to external evaluation. On the basis of this week's conferences the omens scarcely seem propitious on this front. Both ASTI and TUI leaders had to defend themselves from angry delegates, concerned about their union's support for a pilot "Whole School Evaluation" (WSE) scheme. This approach presents difficulties. The WSE may not be perfect but it does, at the very least, seek to replace and update a School Inspectorate system widely seen as inadequate. And participation in the pilot project, at the very least, gives the teachers' unions an opportunity to tailor the WSE programme as they see fit. In any case, as the Department of Education has repeatedly signalled, WSE bears little relation to the much more aggressive approach adopted by private school inspectors in the UK. There is an admirable emphasis on a "collaborative approach" to school inspection where no one feels threatened.
The reality is that teachers will have to embrace this kind of change, or something like it, if they want to pursue any pay claim with vigour. It is to be hoped that the current difficulties from among the ranks with the whole concept of WSE can be overcame. The reality is that whole school evaluation is in the best interests of the entire school community, parents, pupils and, not least, teachers themselves.