A recent report extracted from the OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) “Teaching and Learning international Survey” indicates that a significant number of Ireland’s school teachers are guilty of poor performance. Even more unfortunate is the clear implication in the report that poor performance is being tolerated in Ireland’s schools. There appears to be, according to the data presented in the review, a link between poor performance as a teacher and a lack of incentives to perform better in the classroom.
The OECD report, “Education at a Glance” states, “It is clear that a lack of recognition for effectiveness is linked in many school to an inability or unwillingness to take action for under-performing teaching,” and indicates that Ireland is only catching up to other developed world countries in feedback to teachers and school evaluation.
The survey, conducted in 2007-2008 highlighted the following findings
1. 59% of Ireland’s teachers said poor performance was tolerated in their schools (the highest of the 23 countries surveyed and almost double the average of 34%
2. 11% of Ireland’s teachers said a colleague wouldn’t be dismissed because of poor performance (against an average of 29% across the OECD countries)
3. 39% of Ireland’s teachers said the school principal was using satisfactory procedures to determine underperformance (against an OECD average of 55%
4. 7% of Ireland’s teachers reported that schools rewarded good or improving performance (OECD average is 26%)
5. 39% of Ireland’s secondary schools reported no external or internal school evaluation in the last 5 years

The situation is clearly not acceptable. The impact on children is obvious to anyone who bothers to look at the report. However the report fails to highlight some positive developments.

In the past ten years the provision for children with special education needs in Ireland’s primary schools has dramatically improved. There are now 10,000 Special Needs Assistants working in schools with children who have care and behavioural support needs. There are nearly 10,000 special education teachers working the primary sector. Language support teachers have been posted to cater to the needs of children who do not have English as their mother tongue. The fact that these improvements are now under attack by the present Minister of Education is cause for concern however.