Dr. Michael Redmond:

I was principal of two DEIS schools in Dublin for over 15 years and we came to the conclusion, with parents, that reduced timetables were the right approach to take. This was having gone through a sequence of interventions until the end, as the committee has heard. I was never happy about them and parents were never happy either. Although the students initially thought it was great, later they hated the reduced timetables. It is very important to remember the student's perspective; although it sounds like a bit of a holiday or that there is daylight in their day, what do they do? The answer very often was nothing and it led to their souls and spirits sinking. Their engagement with life in general just dipped. There is a recurring theme in this conversation that the reduced timetables are an answer to the question of a student's profound and enduring misbehaviour and the consequences for everybody else in a classroom. From where does it come? It is only now that we are beginning to really understand the insights into behaviour management. When I was a principal in the 1990s, things were open and shut, but there was no National Behaviour Support Service, for example. We were on our own and when that happens, we work out justice for the majority, rather than the individual, in spite of all of our best efforts. Now things are much better, despite the increased pupil-teacher ratio, which has not improved since the cuts were made during the recession.

There is a worrying theme emerging in this conversation. I was here before to speak about school costs and it was the same theme. It concerns parent power. The Constitution can state all it likes about parents being the primary educators of their children, but the power differential is palpable when a young mother is sitting in a principal's office. It is more often than not the mother who is there. It is something that really needs our serious attention. What emerges very often when things go well for the family is that the principal has given power to the parent. In other cases, the parent needs to claim it and is not in a position to do so. That is something that is deep and profound and it results in bad outcomes for families, students, children and teenagers. It is something that is worthy of greater attention. It is easy to be a giant in a land of pygmies. Certain teachers, school principals and boards can behave like giants when they do not have the constitutional or even moral authority to make life-impacting decisions on children and, by extension, their families without justification. There is a justice and power element to be examined and we must drill a little further into it.