Many Secondary Schools at Risk of Closure
Its quiet very bad news for the students that hundreds of school could be forced to close this term after a pay dispute between secondary teachers and government deepened over the weekend. The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI). The ASTI’s central executive council decided on Saturday to recommend members vote to withdraw from supervision and substitution work at more than 400 second-level schools where they work. The stance signals anger over the pay restrictions placed on them because of their rejection of the Lansdowne Road Agreement.
The majority of teachers who signed up to do work were previously paid for it but that is no longer the case. If ASTI members now refuse to carry out these duties, insurance concerns over a lack of cover for teacher absences from class or to supervise lunch breaks could force schools to shut down unless contingency arrangements are in place.
An agreement on partial restoration, through revised qualifications allowances, is expected to be reached with the Irish National Teachers’ Organization and Teachers’ Union of Ireland within weeks. However, ASTI’s annual convention last March mandated the union to ballot members if anything less than full restoration of a common basic pay scale for all teachers was on offer by the end of August.
“New and recently qualified teachers are not only faced with years of casual short-term contracts, but an inferior rate of pay for doing the exact same work as their colleagues,” said ASTI general secretary Kieran Christie. “Our goal is simple, we want equal pay for equal work. The message from our central executive council is they are prepared to take strike action on this issue.”