ISSUE 37 • APRIL 2007
F E AT U R E S Circular 0139/2006 Draft Codes of Professional Conduct for Teachers Coping with Change School Management Research Project The Most Important Skill of a Principal? Picking the Team Class Allocation: A Guide to Best Practice Who Actually Employs Teachers and Principals – the DES or the BoM? Growing Lack of English Hurts Schools Dispute Resolution: The Essential Skills Growing Up In Ireland Study Remembering the Late Patrick Greene Director: Seán Cottrell director@ippn.ie President: Tomás Ó Slatara president@ippn.ie Editors: Larry Fleming & Damien White editor@ippn.ie Assistant Editor: Virginia O’Mahony Advertising: marketing@ippn.ie Irish Primary Principals’ Network Glounthaune, Co Cork T: 353 21 452 4925 • F: 353 21 435 5648 The opinions expressed in Leadership+ do not necessarily reflect the official policy or views of the Irish Primary Principals’ Network ISSN: 1649-5888 Design and print: Brosna Press 090 6454327 • info@brosnapress.ie
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT A Step into the Unknown A Phríomhoide agus a Phríomhoide Thánaistigh Performance Management is not a phrase that trips off the tongue in schools around the country. However, you may have come across reference to it in the media recently whereby discussions are taking place between our Union, Management Bodies and the DES on this issue. It seems that the National Agreement between the social partners known as Towards 2016 has specified the implementation of Performance Management systems in Primary Schools. We have learned from the DES and the INTO that discussions are underway towards Performance Management systems under two headings – Disciplinary Procedures and Managing the Performance of teaching and learning throughout the school. It appears that the DES now take the position that the Inspectorate will no longer have a function in assessing teaching performance in schools – the responsibility instead resting on Boards of Management. When you also factor in the recent PAGE 1
DES circular requiring Principals to ‘sign off’ on the performance of SNAs and the imminent requirement of Principals to take responsibility for the probation of newly qualified teachers, it begs the question – ‘Does anybody out there have the faintest idea of what goes on in our schools?’ To add to the surreality of all this ‘progress’ as we march towards 2016, the professional body for school Principals – IPPN – has not been invited to the table which will determine procedures and practices that will impact on Principals most of all. Given the Department of Education’s recent statement advising victims of child abuse to focus their litigation on BoMs and the added responsibility for performance management also being shifted to BoMs, it looks like this Autumn will an interesting time as 3,300 schools seek to attract parents, members of the community and teachers to participate in a school management structure which looks more and more like modern day ‘cannon fodder’. Is muidne le meas Tomás O Slatara Seán Cottrell (See Professional Guidance: Class Allocation, page 22)