The Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) has threatened to step up industrial action and hold a ballot for a national principals' strike in the spring if the Minister for Education does not agree to give support to teaching principals.
More than 90 primary schools in the north-west were closed yesterday as principals and teachers from Cos Galway, Mayo, Sligo and Donegal took part in a day of action in Sligo town. A picket was placed on Department of Education offices, and more than 400 teachers took part in a rally addressed by the INTO general secretary, Senator Joe O'Toole.
"We are going to ballot every principal in the country. We want to give a clear, distinct unambiguous message to the Government. We will push until we get a result, and we are a long way from the brink yet," Mr O'Toole said.
"We put it to the Minister: either you deal with this, or the disruption which we are dealing with daily now becomes your responsibility."
The INTO is demanding that the Minister, Mr Martin, implement three key recommendations from a report by a review group which he commissioned.
The three recommendations are that principals be released from teaching for a specified amount of time with substitute cover arranged; funding be provided for all schools for caretaking and secretarial support; and that schools with six mainstream classes have a full-time principal instead of the current threshold of eight.
Speakers at the rally said teaching principals were being taken from their classes for long periods every day. "Principals are spending the morning coaxing boilers into life rather than teaching their pupils and are swamped under a mountain of paperwork," Ms Maire Ni Chuinneagain said.
She said principals were expected to do two jobs at once, teach their class and administer the school. Modern teaching methods, the introduction of IT and new programmes such as Stay Safe and Drug Awareness had all increased the curricular demands.
Principals were also expected to carry out administrative tasks relating to school financing, fund-raising, personnel management and the development of school policies, she said.
The Minister has announced that schools with more than 100 pupils will receive an allocation for secretarial and caretaking expenses, but Mr O'Toole said these schools still had not got any money although it was first promised in 1994.
The INTO president, Mr Des Rainey, said pupils were being cheated of a quality education. "What the Government is doing is actually creating another group of disadvantaged children in the system," Mr Rainey said, The INTO had been making demands on this issue since the 1980s.
Speakers said the system, where a school with 229 pupils was entitled to a full-time principal but one with one pupil less was not entitled to any administrative time, was "unfair and unjust".
Approximately 75 per cent of all primary schools in the State have principals who teach full-time.
Yesterday's rally in the north-west followed a similar day of action in Cork and Clare last month. A similar one-day regional strike will be held in the midlands and Border area on December 6th.
Other measures planned by the INTO to escalate the campaign include the start of a policy of non-co-operation with the Department early in the new year, a national rally of all school principals, and a motion will also be put to the Easter congress for further industrial action.