Department of Education does not respect academics, conference told

The Department of Education does not respect academics or researchers, and the Higher Education Authority has "gone native", the general secretary of the union representing university teachers has said.

Addressing the annual conference of the Irish Federation of University Teachers on Saturday, Mike Jennings said the simple, stark, depressing and dispiriting reality was that "the people who see themselves as charged with controlling and directing us simply do not respect us".

'Gone native'
"The Department of Education does not respect academics or researchers. The Higher Education Authority, which used to see its role as being a bridge between the civil servants of Marlborough Street and those working in academia, has 'gone native' and now sees its job as an enforcer of increasingly remotely conceived 'solutions'.

“These ‘solutions’ – such as the initial teacher education review body report – are frequently promulgated and enforced without anyone bothering to identify what the problem requiring a solution was in the first place.”

Mr Jennings asked when was the last time anyone heard the Minister for Education or the Higher Education Authority express concern that the staff/student ratio in colleges had gone from 1:18.7 in 2008-2009 to 1:20.9 in 2009-2010 to 1:24 in 2010-2011.

“And it has got even worse since then. Such is the total cluelessness of those who make all the major decisions about our colleges that it appears that they actually believe that it is as easy to give a lecture to 50 students as to 100 or 150, and so what’s the problem?

“It can only be wilful and self-serving blindness that makes them not see that you cannot do 150 assessments in the same time or with the staff numbers as you did 50.

"You cannot do the same proportion of tutorials or small-group teaching sessions. You cannot assist 150 per cent more students experiencing educational and/or social or emotional difficulties. You cannot look out for the atypical student, the ones from abroad, of atypical age, or those from disadvantaged areas whose backgrounds give them no cultural familiarity with higher education. And do they care, these people of such little insight? Sadly, the answer has to be 'no, they don't'."

'Pure bunkum'
Mr Jennings also said that comments by Ministers and other "worthies" about "the enhancement of research" was "pure bunkum".

“It is worse, it is hypocritical bunkum. It is pure hypocrisy when you say you value research and you refuse to lift a finger when the staff in one of our finest research institutes are paid up to 30 per cent less than their equivalent colleagues in UCC.”