PAULINE KELLEHER,
Madam, - Many of your readers will not be aware of the appalling anomaly which now exists in second-level schools in the wake of the dispute about supervision and substitution.
A part-time or substitute teacher, fully qualified and with perhaps many years' experience, is being offered €27.12 an hour to teach classes up to Leaving Certificate Higher Level, while a supervisor, who needs no qualification, is being offered €37 an hour simply to supervise them.
This outrageous injustice is being lost in a battle about trivia, such as being "on call". While there has been no public outcry, many full-time teachers are horrified that their part-time colleagues have been so devalued and cannot, on principle, accept the proposed solution to the dispute while this anomaly remains.
We realise that the Minister has not created this whole ridiculous situation. It is, nevertheless, his responsibility to rectify it. In the interests of common sense and natural justice, he cannot continue to offer part-time teachers less to teach students than he is prepared to pay anyone to supervise them.
At the end of a long and bitter dispute something genuinely worth while will have been achieved if part-time teachers are to be paid something in the region of what they deserve. - Yours, etc.,
PAULINE KELLEHER,
CIARA BERKELEY,
St Mary's Holy Faith
Secondary School,
Haddington Road,
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4.