TUI CONFERENCE:SUBTLE PRACTICES are being used by some schools to discourage particular groups such as students with special needs from applying for places, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin said yesterday.
Addressing the annual congress of the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) in Wexford, Ms Hanafin announced plans to open a consultation process on the enrolments issue. Responding to the announcement, TUI president Tim O'Meara said solutions and not speeches were required.
He urged the Minister to use her statutory powers to make sure that public money is not spent on perpetuating inequality. "The dogs on the street know that there are no sanctions on schools that operate selective enrolment practices," he said.
Ms Hanafin told the 400 delegates present that a recent audit of schools' enrolment policies had identified certain geographical pockets where "the evidence would point to certain schools assuming a greater or lesser share of the responsibility for meeting the full range of community needs".
While the audit compiled data on the number of Travellers, newcomers (foreign nationals) and children with special needs, the Minister said there would be no naming and shaming as she was reluctant to label individual schools. Often an imbalance was not simply down to discrimination.
There were complicating issues such as self-selection, where parents may not apply to a school that they believed would not gladly accept their child, or where a newcomer community opted for a particular school, she said.
Over the next few weeks the Minister, along with the education partners, will be looking at written enrolment policies, the caveats and the language used.
They will also examine practices such as retaining pre-enrolment waiting lists or favouring children of past pupils, and the effect those practices can have on groups such as newcomer families.
Ms Hanafin said that to begin with, however, parents "must be made aware of their rights".
On student behaviour, she signalled her intention to expand the National Behaviour Support Service to more schools next year.
How far this expansion will go is as yet unclear, however, and Mr O'Meara described the current provision of behaviour support to 50 schools as "like an elastoplast across a hole in a dam. It is doing nothing to stem the flow".
Delegates applauded loudly as he continued: "All teachers are looking for is the right to be able to go into their classrooms and teach."
Speaking afterwards about the proposed industrial action on the matter of behavioural support, the Minister said: "None of the unions have a right to be contemplating strike when they are part of the partnership process." Mr O'Meara insisted in his address that the TUI was prepared to take "whatever action necessary" in this matter.
The issue of further modernisation of working practices in future pay talks is a contentious one. The TUI says it will enter new pay talks on the condition that no further demands are made of its members in relation to working practices.
Ms Hanafin said: "If you look at what has the modernisation actually involved. In the past it involved doing a couple of parent-teacher meetings outside of school time which was in the interest of parents." This time teachers would be expected to comply with matters such as curriculum change, for example.
"We feel we have given enough already," said TUI general secretary Peter MacMenamin. He expressed a concern that additional measures could lead to a decline in the quality of teaching. "We are not anti-modernisation. There are just more and more things being added to what teachers have to do," he said.