The issue of teacher accountability smoulders on. Even in a year of unprecedented legislation, hiring and spending, it retains its incendiary position at the top of the parental angst league.
It remains at the heart of school-gate discussion, from impotent rage over the lowliest parent-teacher meeting to the great philosophical battles over the publication of examination league tables. It dominated debate at second-level teachers conferences. It tainted the first public taste of Whole School Evaluation (WSE), an initiative understood by parents and pupils to flag meaningful representation and accountability, but ultimately damned as "nothing more than what the teachers themselves thought of the process", in the words of Fionnuala Kilfeather, of the National Parents Council - Primary.
"The teaching profession is likely to remain the most unaccountable profession in the country," says a senior official. "The attitude is: `give us the money, stay out of our classrooms, shut up'. No-one is allowed to look at teacher performance. There is no problem that cannot be cured with money. There is no such thing as a bad teacher. There is no such thing as a teacher losing his job because he's lousy at it. So what you have are 45,000 individuals in an extraordinarily secure profession with zero accountability."
If Whole School Evaluation was supposed to be about accountability, among other things, the omens are poor. To the junior minister for education, Willie O'Dea, it's nothing more than "a tame and harmless creature".
To Fine Gael's education spokesman, Richard Bruton, it is "a timid affair" and to at least one official, it is "lukewarm and insipid". The TUI's general secretary, Jim Dorney, confirmed it to his troops at the Easter conference: it is, he said, about "looking at the totality of a school's organisation, rather than at individual teachers".
"It is not an evaluation of individual teachers," says Fionnuala Kilfeather, "and to judge by the report, the teachers involved were clearly not terribly challenged anyway. There was no input from parents or students so the views of those using the service were ignored. It was obviously just an exercise to appease and reassure the teachers. The big breakthrough of WSE is that inspectors will now be allowed back into second level classrooms. The big gap is that we still have no way of getting rid of a seriously under-performing teacher."
Even so, it is meeting stiff resistance. The ASTI anticipates strong challenges to the scheme at a forthcoming special delegate convention. An angry delegate at a teachers' conference in April suggested that a volunteer refuse to be inspected, as a test case of the new Education Act. Another predicted that such inspections would lead to greatly increased teacher workloads, stress levels and absenteeism.
The truth, however, is that WSE is indeed a harmless creature. Even when the much-vaunted parent-pupil involvement comes into play, many will never see a WSE in action. Second level schools will be inspected just once in 10 years, primary schools once in five.
Some, such as the National Parents Council - Post-primary are placing their trust in the proposed statutory Teachers' Council.
"This will be a Medical Council-type self-regulatory body with representation from all bodies, including parents," says Sean Grehan, company secretary of the NPCP. "So a non-performing teacher can be reported in the same way as a doctor, and the council is bound to set up an investigation."
Others are more sceptical. "All the Teachers' Council will do is establish disciplinary procedures which will relate to misbehaviour," said one official. "The majority on the board will be teachers elected by teachers, with the union mentality that is all about protecting the weakest member."
Even then, not everyone is in favour. Many in the 7,000-member TUI are known to be opposed to joining the council. Their objections range from concerns about its disciplinary functions to the cost of membership - a tax-deductible £50.
All of this suggests problems for the Minister further down the line and not only from teachers. The Information Commissioner's ruling that schools' Leaving Cert. results should be available to the public has ignited a debate that ultimately comes down to accountability. For parents, the central issue is the availability of a broad swathe of accurate information, in whatever form, to help them choose a school.
Teachers however, insist that the issue is the potential stigmatising of some schools and the risk of holistic education being abandoned in the race for higher league placings - an important point given recent studies quoted by Sally Sheils, a Dublin primary school principal, which show that the reason girls do better than boys in exams is because of a greater emphasis on girls' personal development and life-skills at second level.
But however worthy the unions' arguments, the prevailing suspicion is that they are just another cover for evading accountability. When the Minister lodged a High Court challenge to the Commissioner's ruling and admitted that he had been driven by fear of industrial action by the unions, suspicions hardened.
He is of course, in the business of building trust and co-operation with the unions. To parents, however, this approach seems dangerously unbalanced. While teachers stall and haggle, parents must continue to rely on "hearsay, gossip or rumour for information about the performance of schools", says Fionnuala Kilfeather.
"Parents need to be able to compare schools . . . Some parents may have no choice, there may only be one school in the area. But if that school's results are consistently behind those of other schools, surely a community has the right to know this, so that they can press for change, improvement and additional resources? The main argument against league tables - apart from that of targeting individual teachers - seems to be how they might reflect on schools in disadvantaged areas.
This implies an acceptance that some schools will have to be excused continuing poor results simply because of the children who attend them. But these low expectations for children must be challenged and the focus brought on what schools can do to stop it. And, really, isn't it ironic that while the Department and unions have accepted the Leaving Cert. results as a fair way to judge a child, they are outraged at the notion that the same results could be used to judge schools?"
But the Minister is clearly determined not to yield to publication and is supported by people such as Dr Emer Smyth, a research officer with the ESRI and author of an analysis called Do Schools Differ? The British experience, she says, is that parents have actively sought to avoid those schools labelled as "sink" or "failing" with the result that schools have become more and more polarised in social terms.
So if they cannot have league tables, has the Minister anything else to offer parents trying to make an informed choice? What he is offering, apart from the promise of parent power on boards of management, is whole school evaluation - despite the inherent weaknesses, the fact that it has still to prove itself in the eyes of parents, and in any case, will not be available as a tool for comparing schools.
"Central to any process of evaluation, must be the generation of meaningful measurements of performance and comparison," Richard Bruton has said. "This pilot shuts out any such measures. . ." And though rejecting school league tables as an "idiosyncratic model for the Thatcher era", he nonetheless believes that "it is relevant and important to compare what progress pupils of a similar profile have made from their position at entry in different schools. There is ample evidence to show that different policies pursued by schools and different teaching methods do make a huge difference to how pupils fare".
Others refer to on-going projects in Scotland and Northern Ireland where up to three schools in the same area co-operate in comparing each other's performances and measuring results. "We are very closed in this respect," says Fionnuala Kilfeather.
And there the matter rests. For now. The unfortunate result is that the year's great leaps forward have been lost in the league table fog. The new Education Act, for example - the first in the State's history - not only guarantees every child's right to an education appropriate to his abilities, but also entitles parents to see their child's school records, to appeal to the board of management against a teacher's decision and to appeal to the Department against certain actions taken by the board. They are entitled by law to establish parents' associations in schools, to participate in boards of management - including deciding on their membership, to receive copies of board of management reports on the performance of the school and to access to the school accounts.
Also during 1999, 650 new teachers were hired, in the first such move in a decade, with the promise of 1,000 more to come. But "the single most positive thing that has happened", in the words of Sally Sheils, Principal of the North Dublin National School Project, is the reduction in class sizes, capped now at 30 to one. There is also, she says, "the excitement of the new primary curriculum, which is finally a recognition of children's multiple intelligences. And there is the recognition for the first time that staff will need real time to sit down and work together to facilitate developments such as the whole school plans."
Parents opting for a Gaelscoil or multi-denominational school now have real choice following the Government's decision to fund sites for new schools and to cap the costs at £50,000.
Then there was the Points Commission report, offering hope and common sense; the integrated disadvantage initiative; the third level grant scheme for students from families on social welfare; the funding for adult literacy. Next year's estimates will top a mighty £3 billion, 45 per cent higher than 1997.
But the old question remains: will the Easter conferences once again be dominated by the same old bogey? Will powerless parents still be scraping the money together for grinds, leaving the incompetent or lazy or indifferent or burnt out teacher to sail on regardless?