An insider's guide to education
•Are the teacher unions heading into an ugly confrontation with their members over plans to publish school inspection reports?
Motions to next week's INTO conference underline the deep unease among many in the staffroom about the plan to publish the reports, beginning next month.
Despite assurances from Minister for Education Mary Hanafin, many teachers believe that they could be singled out for criticism in the reports. Teachers won't actually be named in the reports, but some will be easy to identify, especially if they teach in smaller schools.
Some INTO members want the union to take "appropriate action" to protect the reputation of teachers if it is impugned by the reports. Translation? The union should subsidise a legal action to halt publication.
The leadership of the Asti and the TUI can expect the same kind of pressure. This one could run and run.
•We all know that mock exams are critically important for students in the run up to the Leaving Cert. But, believe it or not, some schools who tabled mocks in February and March have still not returned scripts to students.
The problem is the age-old one of getting teachers to correct the scripts. Indeed, some grind schools positively discourage students from taking mocks because of the lack of examiners. Other schools charge students and pay private companies to correct the papers.
It is a very messy, unsatisfactory situation given the real importance of the mock to students. So, why not pay teachers extra for correcting mock exams?
•The children, or should that be the parents of children in Limerick can't wait to get to the school gates. The average age of a child in junior infants in the county is just 4.4 years.
In Kilkenny, kids are on average five years before they enter junior infants. The figure for Dublin is 4.5 years.
•Is Bernadine O'Sullivan, the former Asti president, planning a comeback?
Rumours persist that the controversial O'Sullivan will contest the treasurer post at next week's conference.
O'Sullivan lost out recently to Diarmuid de Paor in the race to become Asti deputy general secretary.
Meanwhile, the current Asti treasurer, Patricia Wroe, is a candidate for the vice-presidential post in the union.
•Is there a continued frisson in the air between the Department of Education and the school attendance body, the National Educational Welfare Board (NEWB)?
In the Dáil last week, Mary Hanafin faced a barrage of questions from Labour's Jan O'Sullivan and Fine Gael's Olwyn Enright about an alleged lack of support for the board.
The Minister dealt briskly with the question pointing to the towns that have an education welfare officer and saying nothing about the many towns where school attendance officers are thin on the ground. Maybe NEWB boss Eddie Ward should be more vocal about the under-resourcing of this key body?
Got any education gossip? E-mail us, in confidence, at teacherspet@irish-times.ie
