Ruairí Quinn: Teachers don't appreciate gravity of economic crisis

vamos!

Manach wrote: »

It was left as an assumption that this would be paid work.

If it were paid work, it is a nice assumption and could make the part-time wage into something you could actually live on. I fail to see how it would save any money though? Are there not people doing these jobs already?

Manach

Working on the premise there is a gap in the market for Education services, if people are already performing these jobs, then it would incentivise the newcomers who wish to gain a share of this to deliver a better service.
Teachers have a skillset that is malleable, ie the ability to deliver learning to others about a subject. Would not the delivery be the core competency, and the subject is whatever is currently relevant which is the lesser of the skills to acquire.
As for savings, as a suggestion that the Dept. of Education pays the wages, and that they get repaid by the course-goers who get a job from the course?

Pat D. Almighty

liammur wrote: »

The teaching conferences are taking place this week. I read the teachers are giving Quinn the silent treatment.
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/education/latest-news/quinn-gets-silent-treatment-from-teachers-at-conference-3076321.html

What don't they get? The country is financially ruined. There has to be cuts.

How about primary principal teachers actually teaching if they are so concerned about ratios?

Many teachers are on over €100K.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/1500-teachers-earn-up-to-115k-a-year-189895.html
Something has to give. And I believe in education, but surely this can't go on ?

An Irish politician telling someone that they need to take pay cuts and that they're out of touch with the "gravity" of the crisis.
How many pensions is Ho Chi Quinn getting?

Einhard

I'm going to qualify as a teacher next month, and I have to say I'm pretty pissed off at the way teaching unions haven handled themselves over the past few years. In my opinion, they have cared far too much about pay and conditions and not enough about the education provision, and they have obstructed necessary change and reform in the profession.

For far too long, disinterested and unprofessional teachers were protected from unions which lobbied against openness and scrutiny. We all have had experiences of absolutely terrible teachers who remained in schools year in year out, and nothing was done about them. Things had to change, and the unions should have spent their time engaging and initiating reform on that front, instead of standing in the way.

However, I think things have gotten a little too much out of kilter regarding attitutes to the public service and the teachers in particularly. In thread after thread posters state that the PS have had no reduction in take home pay. This simply isn't true. It's obviously not true. But still people persist with it, even in serious fora such as this.

The myth that teachers do not a tap of work outside school hours is also commonly perpetrated. Yes, the bad teachers that we all have experience of did nothing inside or outside school, but teaching demands far more than simply turning up and hoping for the best. I spent 3 hours today preparing for five classes next week. Admittedly, I'm a student teacher so all of this is new to me, but there'll never be a time in my professional life when I won;t be spending a decent amoutn of time preparing for classes. And that's not even counting correcting exams and copies. I took up exams to correct over the Easter. They were first year history so not particularly dense or demanding. Yet each took about 6 minutes to correct and mark and provide comment. Multiply that by 30 and one gets three hours. And that's for a single first year class. I know colleagues who spend a few hours every day of the Easter holidays correcting exams and copies.

The most egregious myth though, is that teachers live exist in a scrutiny free world, free from inspection and unaccountable to anyone but themselves. Again, this used to be the case, and unions had a lot to do with perpetrating that system. One retired teacher I know spent twenty years in one school without seeing a single inspector. Things have changed though, and the extent to which the critics refuse to acknowledge that is getting a bit perverse. The school in teach in has a Whole School Evaluation in a few weeks. Basically a team of inspectors descends on the school for a week, and goes through everything with a fine tooth comb. Classes are inspated at random, records are examined, management interviewed, checks are made on yearly and termly plans, parents are interveiwed, and exam classes are surveyed and interviewed. A report is then submitted to the Deptartment of Education and published online for everyione to examine. And yet people still maintain that there's no scrutiny! On top of that, there's the system know as drive-bys, whereby an inspector can just turn up without warning and inspect any classes he or shes wishes.

I'm not writing all this because I wish to defend the indefensible. Teaching unions have been far too concerned with pay and conditions oiver the years, and have done a grave disservice to ordinary teachers who work hard and who care about their job. I can honestly say I don't know much about teachers' salaries as the job really is a vocation for me. I know I'll earn enough to lead a decent lifestyle and that's enough for me. If true, those figures quoted in the first few posts are obscene and should be cut.

I am though trying to provide some balance against a lot of the baseless accusations and insinuations that permeate so many discussions about teachers and the Public Service these days. By all means, let there be a debate, but is it too much to ask that it be balanced and based on some degree of reality?

Overheal

A system needs to be implemented for Students and Parents to raise questions of the teaching staff. I was never aware of any 'academic appeals process' when I was in Secondary. A system that I only learned of when I reached college in the US, which is alive and well. Actually I should have filed against an English professor, but dropped the class instead. He graded my essay down, based on his personal opinion, not on the strength of my argument. Bleh.

For all the money that goes into education why aren't your grades available online. You should be able to access the Class averages. When I take a Chemistry test, I can see my grade, and I can see a histogram showing the grades of everyone in the class, which can give you a pretty strong indication if a test was fair, or if the instructor was either being an ass, or if he failed to teach the material effectively to the majority of the class. When a kid comes home and complains about his teacher it would be great if a parent could see the facts, see if their son is slacking off or if there really might be a problem. A Year, or Department Head, or Headmaster, would be able to see at a glance, the performance of all the classes of all their teaching staff, and see where there is room to improve.

I also get to anonymously review my teachers at the end of every semester. They are taken pretty damn seriously too. I've seen teachers get sacked over them. They look at the grades, they look at the amalgamated comments. They can use that data to see very clearly whether you just have a couple noisy whingers or if you have a teacher that needs to be unseated.



It's 2012 folks. The digital tools are available. Don't tell me it's beyond the Irish Education system to implement even a shadow of this.

meglome

Einhard wrote: »

The myth that teachers do not a tap of work outside school hours is also commonly perpetrated. Yes, the bad teachers that we all have experience of did nothing inside or outside school, but teaching demands far more than simply turning up and hoping for the best. I spent 3 hours today preparing for five classes next week. Admittedly, I'm a student teacher so all of this is new to me, but there'll never be a time in my professional life when I won;t be spending a decent amoutn of time preparing for classes. And that's not even counting correcting exams and copies. I took up exams to correct over the Easter. They were first year history so not particularly dense or demanding. Yet each took about 6 minutes to correct and mark and provide comment. Multiply that by 30 and one gets three hours. And that's for a single first year class. I know colleagues who spend a few hours every day of the Easter holidays correcting exams and copies.

I applaud the hard-working teachers out there. But I know from the teachers I meet through work that there are many who don't work hard. Many teachers that do the bare minimum. Many teachers that don’t ever go to in-service training to improve their skills. The teachers I know dislike these lazy colleagues as much as anyone does but here's not much they can do about it.

meglome wrote: »

You may not be aware, I certainly wasn't until I worked in the area, Teachers get continuing further training. Which is great. There's a big push on for example over the last years to have better training in technical subjects, woodwork, metalwork, tech drawing etc and maths too. However what really surprised me was teachers are not obliged to go to the training. The training up until recently was held during school hours and still many never went.

The rough figures are about 20% will not go to any training and about 25% of people who are invited and agree to go don't turn up. Now there will be good reasons for some of these figures but my impression of the majority is they just don't bother.

I believe in-service is run in the evenings or Saturdays now but every teacher should have to go which is not the case still.

Chuck Stone

Einhard wrote: »

The most egregious myth though, is that teachers live exist in a scrutiny free world, free from inspection and unaccountable to anyone but themselves.

Scrutiny is all well and good and should be welcomed but are any prospective or established teachers told they're simply not up to the job?

Celticfire

How much scrutiny is there of lazy parents I wonder? It's all well and good to blame teachers for little Johnny "Tiger" Cub's failings at school as that's the easy option. At secondary level it's up to students to "study" what was taught in school that day.

How many parents are happy to take the easy approach and let Johnny spend all his time out of school texting, Facebooking, playing Call Of Duty or Minecraft?

Parents are supposed to parent also. Give a teen the choice between 2 hours of study or 5 hours of Minecraft and see which one wins out.

KyussBishop

I'd be interested in seeing more detailed statistics like those in the first few articles, but yes, teacher wages do seem to be overinflated and due a cut (and much of the educational system due an overhaul).

Any more sources for detailed stats on education spending? (and other general stats relating to education?)

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

doc_17

Jeez there's some pile of teacher threads open this week! It's a real pity though that the debate could be more rational amd less heated at times.

Tipp Man

Per hour worked teaching must be the best paid job in the country

22 hours a week for what 33 or 34 weeks - an absolute joke

jmayo

doc_17 wrote: »

Jeez there's some pile of teacher threads open this week! It's a real pity though that the debate could be more rational amd less heated at times.

Maybe it has something to do with fact that teachers are off enjoying another two week break ?

Although to be fair some of them have to go off to their annual union get togethers where they usually get to insult the representative of their paymaster, the taxpayers. :rolleyes:

As for a rational debate.
Well our fulltime teachers are overpaid, enjoy a position where they are pretty much unfireable, and over the last decade the quality of education is on the decrease even though the amount of money being spent on education has increased dramatically.

Oh and for those who don't understand basic maths or economics.
The country is broke and the amount of money coming into the exchequer is much less than the amount of money being spent, so it is time for cutbacks in spending and that has to include education.

An finally just a little message to all those teachers (and indeed other public servants) complaining on TV, radio, papers, web, etc that they can't have paycuts or increased taxes because they have big to pay bills:
your pay and taxes are not determined by your bills/expenditure, it is the other way around. :mad:

sarumite

doc_17 wrote: »

OK - Say it a medium sized primary school with about 350 kids. Managing budgets, managing staff, preparing tenders for contruction work/repairs. Dealing with ill-disciplined students, dealing with parents, trying to organise fundraisers, dealing with the DES on an ongoing basis, the paperwork involved in a school with about 400 people all in must be huge, covering for sick/absent teachers.

I would agree that there is more to do than watching youtube, however for primary education at least the principle is not actually managing the teachers. S/he has very little authority in terms of the staff. The board of management of the school does much of that work. It should also be noted that, at least in years gone by, teachers were given 'posts' which meant that they had responsibility for certain aspects of running the school etc. I would say dealing with unruly students and their apathetic parents is probably a full time job in itself though in a medium to large school.

jonniebgood1

Why does the Minister for education over successive years continue to attend these union gatherings? The attendees of these conferences do not seem to have the ability to respect their guest speakers so the guest speaker (Minister) should refuse to attend.

It is classic government pandering to the unions as opposed to actually tackling governance, the job they were elected to do!

I had to check that it wasnt an April fools story http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/1500-teachers-earn-up-to-115k-a-year-189895.html

doc_17

It was a bit strange though yesterday when Quinn began to campaign for a yes vote on the Fiscal Compact. He did get heckled for that!

mikemac1

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Scrutiny is all well and good and should be welcomed but are any prospective or established teachers told they're simply not up to the job?

Yes

My sister did teacher training, was not far off being qualified and was assigned a school

Regularly checked and she failed and is now working in a different area

Some people just quiet to control a class and cannot get a message across.
Realy I'd find it daunting too to walk into a secondary school class and try to control them and hold their interest.

Not everyone can be a teacher.
And I don't want to say the training process "weeds" them out but certainly some people will fail the practical side and that's the end of it

Yes, it's an anecdotal story but I've answered the question

bamboozle

Einhard wrote: »

I'm going to qualify as a teacher next month, and I have to say I'm pretty pissed off at the way teaching unions haven handled themselves over the past few years. In my opinion, they have cared far too much about pay and conditions and not enough about the education provision, and they have obstructed necessary change and reform in the profession.

For far too long, disinterested and unprofessional teachers were protected from unions which lobbied against openness and scrutiny. We all have had experiences of absolutely terrible teachers who remained in schools year in year out, and nothing was done about them. Things had to change, and the unions should have spent their time engaging and initiating reform on that front, instead of standing in the way.

However, I think things have gotten a little too much out of kilter regarding attitutes to the public service and the teachers in particularly. In thread after thread posters state that the PS have had no reduction in take home pay. This simply isn't true. It's obviously not true. But still people persist with it, even in serious fora such as this.

The myth that teachers do not a tap of work outside school hours is also commonly perpetrated. Yes, the bad teachers that we all have experience of did nothing inside or outside school, but teaching demands far more than simply turning up and hoping for the best. I spent 3 hours today preparing for five classes next week. Admittedly, I'm a student teacher so all of this is new to me, but there'll never be a time in my professional life when I won;t be spending a decent amoutn of time preparing for classes. And that's not even counting correcting exams and copies. I took up exams to correct over the Easter. They were first year history so not particularly dense or demanding. Yet each took about 6 minutes to correct and mark and provide comment. Multiply that by 30 and one gets three hours. And that's for a single first year class. I know colleagues who spend a few hours every day of the Easter holidays correcting exams and copies.

The most egregious myth though, is that teachers live exist in a scrutiny free world, free from inspection and unaccountable to anyone but themselves. Again, this used to be the case, and unions had a lot to do with perpetrating that system. One retired teacher I know spent twenty years in one school without seeing a single inspector. Things have changed though, and the extent to which the critics refuse to acknowledge that is getting a bit perverse. The school in teach in has a Whole School Evaluation in a few weeks. Basically a team of inspectors descends on the school for a week, and goes through everything with a fine tooth comb. Classes are inspated at random, records are examined, management interviewed, checks are made on yearly and termly plans, parents are interveiwed, and exam classes are surveyed and interviewed. A report is then submitted to the Deptartment of Education and published online for everyione to examine. And yet people still maintain that there's no scrutiny! On top of that, there's the system know as drive-bys, whereby an inspector can just turn up without warning and inspect any classes he or shes wishes.

I'm not writing all this because I wish to defend the indefensible. Teaching unions have been far too concerned with pay and conditions oiver the years, and have done a grave disservice to ordinary teachers who work hard and who care about their job. I can honestly say I don't know much about teachers' salaries as the job really is a vocation for me. I know I'll earn enough to lead a decent lifestyle and that's enough for me. If true, those figures quoted in the first few posts are obscene and should be cut.

I am though trying to provide some balance against a lot of the baseless accusations and insinuations that permeate so many discussions about teachers and the Public Service these days. By all means, let there be a debate, but is it too much to ask that it be balanced and based on some degree of reality?

and how many poorly performing teachers have been sacked as a result of the increased inspection?

The problem for the teaching reputation is that the majority of people in society have been through the Irish educational system and have experienced excellent and shocking teaching which is why many people have strong opinions on this.

You do make an excellent point about unions being more focused on pay and conditions rather than the quality of education being provided.

Chuck Stone

mikemac1 wrote: »

Some people just quiet to control a class and cannot get a message across.

Realy I'd find it daunting too to walk into a secondary school class and try to control them and hold their interest.

Not everyone can be a teacher.

Oh I agree. I know a couple of teachers personally and they are well worth their wages - they really care about the job and it shows.

I'd make an absolutely terrible teacher fwiw and am under no illusions that teachers who care about their students don't have an easy job.

mikemac1

Children are like wolves, they can smell fear :eek::D

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

bamboozle

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

lets not forget Bertie's and Cowan's governments were dominated with former teachers.

JimiTime

TBH, until politicians show leadership in the cuts stakes, then they will never have the moral authority to make them. As leaders, they need to REALLY take the lead in this. rather than bellow out rhetoric about people not realising how bad things are, they should take massive cuts themselves. Say, cut the basic TD salary from 92k to 60k etc. Maybe then, all their 'Lets think of the country' rhetoric will have some moral sway! If they really did care, then something like this would have been one of the first things to be done.

later12

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

Why does the Minister for education over successive years continue to attend these union gatherings? The attendees of these conferences do not seem to have the ability to respect their guest speakers so the guest speaker (Minister) should refuse to attend.

Respect? I think it's appropriate that Ministers should have to come before employees of the Department of Education and outline their intentions for the salary agreement framework that is in place, and answer any of the teacher's questions, and indeed listen to their concerns - heckles or not.

Ruairi Quinn got heckled when he tried to sell the crowd the Treaty of Stability, Co-Ordination and Governance and was quite rightly verbally encouraged to deal with the issues before him, and not to mount a political podium with respect to the Treaty.

I had to check that it wasnt an April fools story http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/1500-teachers-earn-up-to-115k-a-year-189895.html

Hmm, that represents 2.5% of teachers, and presumably relates almost entirely to Principals who have about 40 staff and have long careers behind them. As such, it hardly seems particularly extraordinary, does it.

Farmer Pudsey

Teachers have lost touch with reality especially the secondary school teachers in a school near us some teachers did not attend after the exam's. The Principle went on holidays while the leaving and junior cert exams were in progress, At least 2 got married during the normal school year in the last 3-4 years. When I go to collect the kids a lot of them are driving 40-50,000 euro cars. School trips are starting to beyond the ability of parents and the Pinciple only wants the parents council to fundraise for his own projects. The cost of after hours study for exam classes is outragous not to mind having a lazy teacher and having to pay for grind's to another teacher at 20-30 euro/hour or more

While some put in extra hours you get fed up listening to them about it and they consider helping at GAA Soccer or rubgy as this as if the rest of us who work 40 hours/week for 48 weeks do not

Dotsie~tmp

Hundreds of thousands of construction sector jobs and related industry jobs gone, up in smoke. No whining, no unions, no sit-ins, no RTE segment, no IDA task force, no Euro compo money. Self employed? eaten all your savings after a year or two? sorry NO DOLE either, go and rot. Can we ask someone to reverse the 100% pay cuts all these people "took"? Their silence amazes me. My silence amazes me. I'm f*cking one of them!

Teachers are entitled to fight their corner of course. Its the delusional element that jars. Do they really think they are that important? Maybe they are, people do like to talk about them constantly. My sisters a primary teacher. Some of the stories of waste and fraud she tells me make me belly laugh. Truth is I'm just jealous, but I'm not bitter, I swear!

byhookorbycrook

Dotsie~tmp wrote: »

My sisters a primary teacher. Some of the stories of waste and fraud she tells me make me belly laugh. Truth is I'm just jealous, but I'm not bitter, I swear!

Do tell.

byhookorbycrook

sarumite wrote: »

I would agree that there is more to do than watching youtube, however for primary education at least the principle is not actually managing the teachers. S/he has very little authority in terms of the staff. The board of management of the school does much of that work. It should also be noted that, at least in years gone by, teachers were given 'posts' which meant that they had responsibility for certain aspects of running the school etc. I would say dealing with unruly students and their apathetic parents is probably a full time job in itself though in a medium to large school.

Posts have not been replaced, so if a teacher leaves a school the work they did for their post of responsibilty must be divided up amongst the staff. Principal has huge authority over the staff, s/he reports to the board of management, but the day to day running is down to the principal. Principal also has overall responsibilty for learning support and for curriculum and policy development(All of which must be adapted to the needs of the individual school.
As a rough idea of some of the policies to be formulated,here is a list.(Not exhaustive, by the way)


Absences
Access rights to children in schools
Acceptable Use
Accidents
Accommodation
Accounts
Administration
Administration of Medicine
Adult Bullying
Ancillary Staff
Anti-racism
Art therapy
Assembly
Assessment
Assistant Principals
Attendance
Audio-Visual Equipment

Behaviour (Discipline/Conduct)
Board of management
Book Fair
Bullying
Bus Safety

Career Breaks
Caretaker
Child Protection
Choir
Class Allocation
Class Size
Class Room Organisation
Commercialism
Communication
Complaints
Confidentiality
Council – Establishing a School Council
Course Days
Critical Incidents
Custody & Separation (also Access)

Data Protection & Record Retention
Diabetes
Disadvantage (also Inclusion)
Discipline (also Behaviour/Conduct)

EAL
Education Act 1998
Education Welfare Act
Emergency Phone Numbers
Emergency Closures
EPV Days
Equality
Electronic Games (and Mobile Phones)
Enrolment
Ethos
Excursions (School Tours & Excursions)
Exemptions – Irish
Exceptional Ability & Giftedness

Fieldtrips (School Tours & Excursions)
Fire Safety – Fire Drill & Evacuation
First Aid

Garda Vetting

Handwriting
Headlice
Hire & Use of School by Outside Groups
Home-School Links – HSCL Scheme
Homework
Health & Safety

Induction of New Teachers
ICT
Inclusion (also Disadvantage)
Induction of New & Infant Pupils
Inspectorate
Instrument Rental Agreement
In-school Management
Insurance
Internet
Internet Parent Permission
Intimate Care & Toileting

Job Sharing
Learning Support
Leave of Absence
Library
Litter
Lone Parent Families (under Custody & Separation)

Medical
Medication – Administration
Meetings
Mobile Phones
Multiculturalism

Newsletters

Parent Teacher Communication
Parent Teacher Meetings
Parents Associations
Phone – Staff & Children
Photocopying
Physical Intervention
Post-Primary Schools
Progress Reports (Pupil Profiling & Reporting)

Reading Schemes
Reception, Assembly & Dismissal of Pupils
Reconstitution of Classes (Classroom organisation)
RSE
Religious Education
Reports
Resources

Sanctions (Behaviour/Conduct/Discipline)
School Closings
School Evaluation
Schemes of Work
Secondments
Sexual Harassment
Sick Leave
SNAs
Splitting Classes
Sports
Staff Development (Teacher In-service)
Staff Meetings
Stay Safe
Substitute Teachers
Supervision
Suspension
Swimming

Testing
Timetables
Tours

Work Experience /Student Teachers
Whole School Evaluation

Dotsie~tmp

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

Do tell.

She would cut my f*cking bollox off if it got back. No boat rockers allowed.

spurious

liammur wrote: »

Many teachers are on over €100K.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/1500-teachers-earn-up-to-115k-a-year-189895.html

Many men are rapists. Are you a man liammur?

Those figures are ludicrous. There are 750 second level schools in the country, less than 30 of them large enough to have Principals or Deputy Principals on such huge allowances. How does the Examiner make that into 1500 teachers?

Unbelievable crap.