Junior Assistant Monitors

bellissima

I am hoping that someone may be able to enlighten me about "Junior Assistant Monitors" for my history study on Primary Education in Ireland. I often heard the term mentioned among elderly people. The monitors were untrained teachers, and, as far as I can gather, served a sort of apprenticeship in the classroom. They had some official status, but not the N.T. Diploma required until the mid seventies until this, in turn, was replaced by the BEd. I have checked online but have only found one reference to the term.

mackes

As far as I know they were trained in model schools but I thought the practise would have died out by the 1930/40's. The model schools were considered the very best example of teaching and education at primary level and often had inspectors based in the school too to oversee the monitor training. There were two kinds of monitor-one was an older child who taught/supervised younger children while the teacher was teaching and the other type of monitor was a teacher in training but these were less common.

Have you read 'History of education' by John Coolahan? He discusses the use of monitors in his first chapter.

bellissima

Thank you very much for that information, Mackes. I will also consult John Coolahan's book as advised.

spurious

I don't think it died out that early. My father's aunt was a primary teacher in a school in the midlands in the 50s-70s and AFAIK she was trained by being the teacher's helper from about the age of 16 (post Intermediate).
I'm sure someone in St. Pat's would have information on it too.

echo beach

When my daughter started school in 1998 her teacher, who was excellent, told me she had originally worked as an unqualified teacher until the rules changed and it was no longer possible to do so and had then done done some sort of 'conversion course' to regularise her situation. I don't know when that was but I assumed it was the seventies.
The time worked before that didn't qualify towards her pension so she was above the usual retirement age. She retired soon after that and has since passed away.

bellissima

Thanks, Spurious and Echo beach.