Ms Moira Leydon:

Deputy O'Brien's question was about capacity issues in the first instance and then about teachers and mental health. That is quite an issue that is emerging, but I will take the latter part last.

I am very familiar with the work Jigsaw does, but every time I listen to its representatives I continue to be impressed in that we do have solutions to problems. The members are practical people. They are legislators, and they want solutions. They do not want a critique of what is wrong but to get good guidance on what might work from people like us who are on the ground. Capacity is extremely problematic. Putting on my ASTI hat, this day next week at our conference we will launch the third survey in a row of cutbacks in schools. Schools have an average loss of 2.1 subject teachers. To put that in context, as every subject teacher covers 33 children, if a school loses two teachers, 66 children have to be sorted out. Those 66 children cannot be parked during the day. They have to be dealt with, and our survey will show how that can be done. What I am saying is that the entire thrust of the guidelines is the whole-school approach, but when we have loss of capacity whereby teaching staff are removed from the school, the capacity is severely impaired.

The first message I would give members as legislators is that they must protect the funding for education. It is essential that in the next budget funding for education is not reduced in any way. I would always make the case that it should be enhanced, but it must be protected because if schools lose another teacher, they will be at their wits' end. They are at their wits' end already in terms of providing the curriculum, not to mention implementing these profound approaches to societal problems such as well-being.

Regarding the other suggestion I would make, I was interested to hear Senator Moran mention funding for third level. That is something on which the committee should pick up. In the coming year, the Teaching Council, the regulatory body for the teaching profession, will introduce a framework for continuing professional development, CPD. What that means is that there will be mandatory upskilling for teachers on an annual basis. What constitutes upskilling will be worked out, but there will be a huge demand for the relevant courses to be made available to those in the profession. One of the problems currently is that apart from the SPHE support service, which does not get enough funding anyway, there is not much alternative training.

I suggest that members work to protect the budget for education, make sure the third level institutions get funding to allow them provide courses to upskill teachers, and be aware that online training is not sufficient. It must be backed up by face-to-face peer coaching and mentoring.

The other practical point raised by Deputy Butler, a fellow Trim citizen, was that board of management training is critical. The ASTI had discussions with the departmental team and it is putting together the guidelines. Regardless of the initiative we examine in schools, the Achilles heel of those initiatives is the board of management. The Department is quick to say we have autonomous boards of management which are ultimately accountable, but sometimes they are the people who know least about what is supposed to be happening and do not have the required skills. They have a lot of goodwill and community and other expertise, but they do not know the ins and outs of these matters. Speaking practically, the members should say that in the education budget the management bodies should be given money to provide training for boards of management. That is critical.

I am conscious that other people wish to speak, but I want to make a final point. There are positives. We have a big reform agenda in education. It is not easy for teachers. There are dimensions of it with which the ASTI in particular would have issues, but it is a reform agenda that is creating capacity for these type of changes. For example, we now have school self-evaluation, and the Department must be commended on taking a "slowly, slowly" approach rather than a stick-based accountability approach. Over time, school self-evaluation will develop schools' capacity for self-reflection in terms of asking how they are doing and whether they are doing something well, which was mentioned earlier in respect of the excellent school with which I am very familiar. It is about bringing all those people together and being able to do things in a coherent fashion. The school self-evaluation measures will support that.

We must be positive. It is the members' job as legislators to help bring this country back to some degree of decency of lifestyle and prosperity. It is important that we give people positive messages about what they can do, but the most important aspect is to protect the capacity of schools to do what they are doing and to ensure further cuts are not imposed. That is the fundamental message.

With regard to the question on teachers' mental health, I am always reluctant to talk about this because teachers are leaders and professionals whose job it is to care for children. However, there are incredible stresses, including financial, on teachers these days. A teacher to whom I spoke yesterday told me that while she would like to upskill and do a master's she cannot afford to do so because her husband is unemployed and one of her children is currently at college. These are the type of stresses about which I am sure members are hearing at their constituency offices. We are lucky in Ireland in that we have an incredibly dedicated teaching force at primary and secondary levels.