ASTI to ballot over timing of teacher meetings during school day

The country's biggest secondary teachers' union is to ballot members over a directive which would require members to only attend meetings relating to Junior Cycle reforms which take place during the normal school day.

The development has the potential the open up a new front in industrial relations tensions between the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI), school managers and the Department of Education.

Under Junior Cycle reforms, teachers are required to attend meetings aimed at supporting them in assessing students’ performance in classroom-based assessments.

A 2015 agreement between the departtment and teachers’ unions states that “a limited number of meetings may need to draw on teachers’ bundled time to run beyond normal school tuition hours for some of the duration of the meeting.”

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Pressure

However, the ASTI says many schools are now routinely scheduling these meetings outside teaching hours and teachers are being put undre pressure to attend them by school managers. The union’s ASTI’s central executive committee has previously formed the view that such meetings must be scheduled to “start and end within normal school tuition hours” and only a limited number may run over.

The union has now agreed to conduct a ballot of its members on the scheduling of these Slar meetings.

A spokeswoman said the ballot is in line with the ASTI’s position that Slar meetings should be held in accordance with agreed arrangements.

Slar meetings are scheduled for two hours, but in some cases they extend into time beyond the normal school day.

Until recently only a relativelly small number of teachers were involved in these Slar meetings.

However, the roll-out of Junior Cycle reforms means that more and more teachers are required to attended these meetings.

A typical subject teacher is required to attend two Slar meetings a year: one for second year students and another for third years.

Loss of tuition time

School managers, however, say they are alarmed at prospect of these meetings taking place during school time only and say this would lead to a huge loss of tuition time for students.

Most schools would expect to schedule anywhere between 30 and 40 Slar meetings a year.

They say scheduling all these meetings during tuition time could mean that students would the lose the equivalent of several days of tuition.

The department has previously said issues around the timing of Slar meetings have been dealt with by teachers unions throuhg a Junior Cycle Implementation Committee.

It has previously welcomed the “positive feedback that has been received regarding the usefulness of the Slar meetings that have been held so far.”