THE INTO president, Mr Brian Hynes, has said that school discipline and behaviour codes are "simply guidelines which cannot be enforced on pupils, parents and guardians who refuse to accept and to operate them."
He told the opening of the primary teacher union's congress in Galway yesterday evening that some primary teachers were "now coming to the conclusion that something approaching formal contracts need to be drawn up between some parents and guardians and boards of management. Persistent breaches could then be treated as formal breaches of contract."
He said a minority of parents "simply ignore all communications from teachers", with the result that their children "can almost laugh" at the school. A motion, to be debated today, calls for the introduction of legislation "which will give school authorities, including teachers, statutory rights in relation to the implementation and enforcement of the school's approved disciplinary procedures, including the right to insist, where necessary, on a psychological assessment of pupils and access to support services."
Mr Hynes also complained of delays in distributing teacher materials for the new primary curriculum, for which teacher training is due to begin this year.
He said primary teachers were "fast running out of patience awaiting the arrival of the curriculum books" and were "extremely concerned that the pre-implementation arrangements in terms of in-service and resources are still only at a preliminary stage".
Pointing to numerous Combat Poverty Agency studies showing that children face a higher risk of poverty than adults, Mr Hynes urged the Minister for Education to move without delay to set up the Educational Disadvantage Committee, which had been promised in last year's Education Act.
Turning to pupil assessment and teacher appraisal, Mr Hynes expressed support for appropriate standardised tests for all classes between first and sixth in primary schools.
He went on: "The administration of tests for the purpose of aggregating assessment outcomes for each school is undesirable, inappropriate and totally unacceptable to the INTO. Crude league-table approaches to ranking schools is also entirely inappropriate and is absolutely a misleading way of assessing school effectiveness."
An open debate about the role of integrated education in promoting understanding and trust between the North's divided communities is long overdue, a senior ICTU official told the congress.
Mr Oliver Donohue, the ICTU's research and information officer, said "the concern of both religious groupings about maintaining their own identities and traditions is understandable. However, persistent opposition to the children of both traditions sharing the same classroom and playing in the same school yard is difficult to comprehend."
Mr Donohue went on: "Surely both communities have enough confidence in their own values and traditions not to feel threatened by children getting to know each other through sharing together the experience of learning?"
He added: "It is time for church leaders, teacher leaders and parent leaders to shake off the shackles of segregation, so that the minds and hearts of our children can open up to each other in new ways for the new millennium."
Mr Donohue congratulated the INTO for its "courage and vision" in supporting integrated education, stressing that "courage is needed to lead people out of the false security of the mental ghettoes which have imprisoned them for generations."