THE WITHDRAWAL of substitution cover for uncertified sick leave has shaken teachers and schools to the core. Many fear that the new arrangements will be unworkable.
Malahide Community School is a large, vibrant school of 1,200 students and 80 teachers.
“I’ve just come from a staff meeting. There are real fears that this is going to be unmanageable,” says deputy principal Patricia McDonagh.
She explains: “Last Monday was not typical, but it can happen. I came into school and I had two teachers out on long-term certified leave, three more were on short-term certified leave, one was at a meeting of the teachers’ council and three were off on official school business. Then four teachers rang in sick that morning. There’s a bug going around.
“Two more teachers came to me at lunchtime. They were really not feeling well and I could see that they weren’t so they went home. I was left with 77 classes to cover.”
The recent Budget says substitution cover will be suspended from January 2009 for absences arising from uncertified sick leave in all schools. In other words, from January, teachers who call in sick and teachers who go home feeling ill will not be entitled to substitute cover until they go to a doctor, get a medical cert and deliver it to the school.
Post-primary schools have a supervision and substitution scheme in which teachers opt to be available for supervision duties or substitution cover as a school requires.
The department is crossing its fingers and hoping these teachers will fill the substitution void.
“For the Minister to say, ‘Oh, you can use your supervision and substitution’ is ridiculous,” says Ms McDonagh. “I can only cover 60 periods in a week with my supervision and substitution teachers. I had 77 to cover in one day on Monday. Where does that leave me?”
Dermot Curran, principal of Kilkenny CBS, says: “This will make many schools incapable of operating. The idea of a teacher calling in sick and not being entitled to a substitute is retrograde.”
The only option for many schools, according to Mr Curran, will be to herd students into a hall for supervised study. “It will be up to the principal to babysit the students,” says Mr Curran. “It’s babysitting, it’s not education and it’s not the job of a principal. We are overloaded with work as it is.”
The uncertified leave will also affect schools at primary level. The usual arrangement when a substitute is unavailable is to divide a class into groups and send the children into the remaining classes in the school.
Gaelscoil na Camóige in Clondalkin consists of eight classes. “I have a class of 30 in a room that’s half as big as it should be,” says Siobhán Ní Dhonnachdha. “If someone rings in sick, their class will have to be split between the rest of us so we’ll each get five extra students into an already overcrowded class. If two people call in sick it just won’t be possible.”
The INTO has said children will have to be sent home in such circumstances. “No teacher wants to do that,” she says. “But it’s a health and safety thing.”
Ms McDonagh says: “The implications of this cut are hugely insulting. I see teachers drag themselves into school rather than miss a day. Nobody wants to be absent. The work has to get done either way.”
The withdrawal of cover for teachers absent on school business will be explored in this series tomorrow, but one affects the other.
“You can plan for teachers being away at matches and so on, but you can’t plan for the uncertified sick leave,” says Ms McDonagh.