TEACHER'S PET: It's that time of year again when we find out just how much muscle the education minister can flex at the Cabinet table.
For the next few weeks, don't expect to see much of Mary Hanafin as she is working "flat out" on the forthcoming Budget Estimates. The process will be a big test for Hanafin and for the hard-working secretary general of the Department, Brigid McManus.
McManus's appointment - she is a former senior official in Finance - ruffled the feathers of some envious male colleagues in the Department. Some are still not happy campers.
The truth is McManus has been a revelation. Insiders point to her incredible work ethic (12-hour days are not unusual) and her capacity for independent thinking. Her ability to keep a tight rein on spending has also won plaudits across the public service.
So what's the challenge facing the Dynamic Duo in the Estimates? More money to reduce class sizes in primary schools, more money for special needs, new money for a third-level modernisation fund, new money to help schools offset a 20 per cent increase in energy costs . . . and more money for disadvantage. It is quite a long shopping list.
Hanafin knows she won't get everything - not least because there should be one more Budget to go before the 2006/7 election. But the unions and everyone else will want to see spending up by at least 12 per cent.
Who was the biggest influence on Tim Campbell, winner of the hit BBC2 business series The Apprentice?
Take a bow Gerry Foley, headmaster of Belvedere College, Dublin. Writing in the Sunday Times, Campbell recalled his troubled childhood in east London and how people saw his frustration as aggression. "Then one of my teachers, Mr Foley, really listened to me as an individual. That's when I started to grow up." With the exception of his mother, he says he owes everything to his former teacher.
Mary Hosty, the Dublin teacher who wrote so vividly about the ratemyteachers site on these pages last year, is also a bestselling author.
Her latest fine piece of fiction, A Perfect Moment, will be launched by the current Rose of Tralee, Aoibhinn Ni Shúilleabháin, next week.
Relations between the three teaching unions - unsettled by ASTI militancy in recent years - are returning to normal .
The rapprochement was completed recently with all three unions - ASTI, the INTO and the TUI - exploring the possibility of a a joint submission to the benchmarking body. The executives of the three unions met in joint session last month in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin.
Can it be long before we hear renewed calls for a merger between the two second-level unions?
One of the worst names of any organisation in the education sector is about to hit the dust. The group representing the seven universities, the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities (gulp!), is getting rid of this clumsy title. From next week the group will be re-fashioned as the Irish Universities' Association (IUA).
Now can someone, somewhere do something about the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals - the NAPD for short!
Got any education gossip? E-mail us, in confidence, at teacherspet@irish-times.ie
