Children suffer in teaching scandal
THIS week, as always in the Easter season, the teaching unions will gather for their annual conferences.
Their members will express their concerns, in explicit and sometimes heated terms, to the new Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn. And these concerns will be more numerous and pressing than usual.
Like everybody else, the teachers have been hit hard by the financial crisis. Large numbers of the unions' members, especially recent graduates, have the utmost difficulty finding jobs.
At the same time, recent reports have shocked the sector with their revelations about declining standards in Irish education. We have fallen steeply in the world tables. Almost a quarter of our 15-year-old boys are illiterate. We lag in mathematics and science.
There are widespread complaints that at every level, including university, students are not taught how to think for themselves.
Sadly ironic, then, that at a time like this it should emerge that up to 400 unqualified or retired people taught in our primary schools for 50 days or more in the current school year.
This is a problem of long standing. It has so incensed the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) that it has provoked a threat of industrial action from 2013. A bill designed to rectify it became law five years ago but has never been implemented -- a silent commentary on our slapdash politics and poor administration.
More to the point, however, is that children's earliest years are the most important in their entire educational development.
We cannot afford a situation in which they are taught by unqualified people while the numbers in classes rise and qualified teachers remain unemployed.
Granted, schools often have real difficulties in finding substitutes when sudden vacancies arise. This difficulty could be eased, if not perhaps entirely overcome, by the establishment of pools of qualified teachers to fill vacancies.
The INTO president, Jim Higgins, favours the proposal. He also wants strict time limits on the employment of unqualified or retired teachers. That seems to suggest that the practice of employing unqualified persons will not be entirely eradicated.
Let us hope that it also means that the threat of industrial action will never be carried out.
The date of 2013 was set during a period of labour shortages, when the union wanted to give the authorities time to train more teachers.
Times have changed. But one principle has not changed and cannot change. The interests of the nation's children must come first.
Split on votes a threat to the British coalition
BRITISH cabinet ministers are not just campaigning openly on opposite sides in the debate on the proposed change in the UK voting system. They speak bitterly about their coalition colleagues. A four-letter word, "lies", has been bandied about.
A clear breach of collective responsibility, a principle supposed to prevail.
But that is nothing new. Harold Wilson, when prime minister, allowed Labour ministers to oppose each other publicly in a referendum on EC membership. In the Dail, Liam Cosgrave as Taoiseach once voted against a bill introduced by his own government.
Intriguingly, the Tory-Lib Dem confrontations have little to do with the merits of the proposal itself, to switch to the alternative vote in single-seat constituencies from the present first-past-the-post system.
The Lib Dems support it mainly because they believe that it would deliver them better election results. The Tories oppose it because they fear they would suffer.
Proposals for political reform here usually include a move to a system that features single-seat constituencies. That might clean up one garbage-strewn corner of the system. Enough for now, though, if Fine Gael and Labour avoid British-style splits.
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