Funding will top agenda at annual congress, says incoming Cork INTO president  

The incoming president of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO), Cork teacher Anne Horan, has said the need for better funding of education will be top of the agenda at the union’s annual congress.

Nearly 1,000 primary and special education teachers, along with school leaders, will gather in Galway from today until Wednesday for the INTO annual congress, which will be addressed by the minister for education and youth, Helen McEntee, on Tuesday.

Ms Horan, who hails from Ballineen and will become INTO president during the conference, told The Echo: “The main topics up for discussion are underinvestment in primary education, workload for teachers and principals, the teacher supply crisis, and special education.

Frustrated 

“People are getting very frustrated with these issues. It’s very hard for teachers and principals to go into school not knowing what’s going to happen that day.

“Principals get calls at 8am saying someone is sick; there’s no sub available. That leaves you with two options. You can split the classes, meaning the third class teacher would get some fourth class students too, and in a smaller school you could end up with a lot of classes in together.

“The second option is taking special education teachers away from their normal work and putting them into a classroom.

“Every child is still being taught by a qualified teacher, but the problem is children with special educational needs are not getting the focused support they need.”

Special education

In terms of special education, Ms Horan there is a need for therapists, including counsellors as well as speech and language therapists in schools. “There often isn’t anyone in the locality, so you have children leaving school at 11, travelling an hour, having their session, then back to school — these services need to be in our schools,” she said.

“We’re looking for the Government to step up and fund special education properly. There’s a lot of new classes opening, but they need to be properly resourced; it’s not enough to just give children a classroom and a teacher.”

Workload

She said workload is a huge issue. 

“INTO surveys identify teachers are stressed by class sizes, and the huge amount of new initiatives all come with a lot of administrative work,” she said, adding that there is a lot of work to take home at the end of the day.

An INTO workload survey, completed by more than 4,000 teachers and 1,100 school leaders, shows that nine out of 10 primary teachers report struggling with excessive workload, with the teaching role described as increasingly “stressful”, “demanding”, and “inflexible”. 

In the survey, teachers cited a bureaucratic burden of paperwork which delivers no tangible benefit to teaching and learning, and school leaders said they were facing serious consequences for their health and wellbeing.