Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

As a former secondary teacher, I, too, share a huge amount of the reservations about the Teaching Council. It was set up in 2001 as a professional standards body for teaching and to promote and regulate the profession. What has it actually done to defend teachers? What has it actually done to take on some of the key questions facing teachers? I argue it has done very little.

The view of teachers on the ground, as the previous speaker said, is that it is a quango. Teachers do not understand why they had to pay €90 up until last year to click a button on a computer to renew their teaching certificates. Certainly, the first time a teacher registers, anyone can understand that she or he must pay a fee for the processing and checking of all of the requirements, but to pay €90 to the Teaching Council every year was completely wrong. Suddenly, after many complaints, the council was able to reduce the fee to €60 last year, so why were they not able to do that in previous years?

The biggest crisis in teaching right now - I ask if the Minister agrees - is not poorly performing teachers. It is that one in four secondary teachers in this country does not have a permanent job or full teaching hours, and half of them have to work in Lidl and McDonald's at the weekend. This has been told to the Minister and the Teaching Council for several years. Compare the figures for Ireland where, in second level schools, only 73% of teachers have a permanent position, with those for Norway, where it is 90%. For under-30s it is much worse, as 52% have a contract of a year or less, which is more than half of secondary teachers under 30. When Deputy Ruairí Quinn was Minister, it was reported in the Irish Examinerat the teachers' conferences, that a number of teachers were going to Lidl, filling stations and McDonald's to supplement their incomes to survive. What is being done about this? Certainly nothing by the Teaching Council. There is not a mention of it to be seen on its website. Now here it is, seemingly more concerned with sacking teachers than actually defending teaching.

The Bill is not known about. I rang a number of teachers today and checked the union websites. There is no discussion or mention of it. People do not know about it. I would like to deal with some of the issues that it raises. Fitness to practice hearings are to be made public and there is to be an expansion of the grounds for a teacher to be hauled in front of one of these investigating committees. Will the Minister justify and explain why something like that has to be done in public? Is it to feed the tabloid media and an anti-teacher sentiment that is clearly evident? Is it to distract attention from the serious cuts that have taken place in education and the pressures teachers are under? I think it is.

Why is it beneficial that somebody who is medically unfit to teach would be hauled up in front of a public investigation? I do not think something like that is beneficial to somebody in that position. If somebody is clearly medically unfit to teach, that can be dealt with by a body. I do not think the media have to be there outside to cover it. In the United Kingdom, for example, there was a doctor suffering from depression and it was deemed he would be a suicide risk if he was called in front of one of these public hearings. He asked voluntarily to withdraw his own name from the medical register, and the medical council refused. They said, "no, we must carry things out in public." Why is that beneficial? Are there any public hearings of bankers? For most employees in this country, there are internal investigative procedures, for example in the banking sector, the insurance sector and so on. It only seems really to apply to doctors, nurses and now teachers, who are already under a lot of stress and strain.

This has nothing to do with child welfare. Nobody is saying anyone who is a danger to children should be teaching or should not be in front of an investigative committee. I ask, though, how effective is vetting? Is it likely that we are going to find a whole load of paedophiles or people who are a danger to children through the vetting procedures we currently have? No, it is not. It is not a key problem in teaching. There is no evidence that it is a major problem.

What this seems to be about is making public show trials of teachers. The tabloid media and many in the Government would like to convince the public that there is a serious crisis of under-performing teachers, but in fact, looking at the literacy and numeracy qualifications that have been attained in recent years despite the gutting of education and all of the cuts, the loss of SNAs, teachers, resource teaching and English back-up teachers the standards have actually increased. That is because teachers have taken on board a whole lot of evidence from other countries. There has been a lot more team teaching and more focus on key things that I saw when I was teaching in a disadvantaged, DEIS area. Huge strides were made and there was constant updating of teaching methods.

There are enough things, including drive-by inspections in force. What other profession has drive-by inspections? At any moment, an inspector can come in. The teacher might be having a bad day, might have a cold, might be dealing with discipline issues in the school etc. An inspector comes in on top of that. Now the Minister wants to have show trials and public hearings and the grounds for this, I challenge, have nothing to do with child welfare. The grounds which the Minister is adding with this legislation are poor professional performance, which is not a child welfare issue, and conduct contrary to the code of professional conduct. Obviously, the issue is not if someone has a conviction in the State or has committed an indictable offence as that person is going to be disciplined and may lose his or her job.

This seems to feeding into an anti-teacher sentiment which the Government wishes to increase right now, as it is taking on the ASTI and the TUI, which through major strikes are defending their right not to give State accreditation to their own students. It seems to be quite convenient that the Minister is bringing this legislation forward at this time. What is she doing about the more than one in four secondary teachers who have to work in other jobs to try to keep a roof over their heads? She is doing absolutely nothing. She is not increasing their wages. As for the newly qualified teachers, NQTs, I would love to see what the Teaching Council has done to keep casualisation out of teaching and to defend the profession. I am very disappointed and hope the unions involved with the Teaching Council rear up about this.

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