Hundreds of secondary schools are suffering from rising indiscipline, resentment among staff and poor working relationships because of the contingency plans to deal with the supervision issue, school principals told a conference yesterday.
The annual conference in Galway of the Joint Managerial Body heard from many principals who said the plans, while successful on one level, were causing huge strain and stress for school managers.
The plans, which have been in place since March, involve non-teachers providing supervision and substitution in place of ASTI members who have withdrawn from the work. The plans have kept schools open, but principals yesterday emphasised that not all had gone smoothly.
The conference also heard warnings that the traditional end-of- term period, when pupils are often involved in pranks and mild disturbances, could provide a major test for the contingency arrangements. One principal said non-teachers might find it hard to cope with the "high jinks" of some pupils.
The Joint Managerial Body represents hundreds of secondary schools and its members' views give a strong indication of how the plan is working on the ground.
The principal of Castleknock College in west Dublin, Mr Andy McGeady, said paying €34 an hour to non-teachers was having a "corrosive impact" on schools. He said the chances of getting teachers to leave the staff room to do something for nothing were slim.
Sister June Fennelly from Waterford said the relationship between supervisors and teachers was not good, with a lot of "aggro and resentment" on the ground. She said non-teachers were not being allowed into staff rooms and this was not helpful. It was bad to have such an atmosphere in a Christian school.
Mr Jim O'Shea, a principal from Templemore, said: "I am close to exhaustion. This is a stressful enough job without having to deal with this." He said discipline had declined and while things looked all right on the surface there was an "undercurrent" spreading through the school. "I dread September," he added.
Mr Pat Keating, of CBC Monkstown in Dublin, said that because of the contingency plan, problems with student behaviour were now coming straight to him. He said "youngsters being what they are" were taking advantage of supervisors, who had not been able to build up the same level of skills as teachers. "There is something different in the atmosphere," he said.
The conference also discussed whether teachers who taught in grind schools should also be allowed to examine pupils in oral exams. Mr Kieran Groeger from CBS Youghal said grind teachers sometimes found themselves subsequently examining them in oral exams. He said this broke the principle that teachers in State exams should never examine their own students.
"It is a question of integrity", he said. He called on the Joint Managerial Body to get assurances from the Department of Education that the practice would be ended. He said it was happening in subjects such as French, German and Irish. He had nothing against grind schools, but the integrity of the exams needed to be maintained.