Members will be aware that the Minister for Education and Skills, Joe McHugh T.D. published the Education (Student and Parent Charter) Bill, 2019 on 10th September 2019. The ASTI has a number of key concerns regarding the provisions of this Bill. Uppermost of these is our view that this is not an inclusive piece of legislation, best exemplified in the title of the Bill. Teachers have been excluded. This is not in keeping with the fact that schools are inclusive learning communities. The ASTI has lobbied to seek to ensure that the title and other provisions of the Bill are changed.
It is clear that the general elements of the Student and Parent Charter as laid out in the Bill, will impact on teachers and schools in a variety of ways including:
- How schools will engage with students and parents, collectively and individually.
- How students and parents will be consulted and invited to participate meaningfully in matters relating to the student's experiences in school.
- How students and parents can be empowered by the provision of information.
- How the school will be accountable to students and parents.
- How specific information on school performance in teaching and learning will be provided.
- How feedback will be invited and how student and parent concerns will be identified.
- How the school will seek to be responsive.
- How grievances and complaints will be handled.
Regarding the matter of how grievances/complaints against teachers should be handled, the ASTI has been calling for this to be set out on a statutory basis for some time, as have other education stakeholders. Under Section 28 of the Education Act 1998 the Minister can prescribe procedures to allow grievances of “students, or their parents, relating to the students’ school” to be submitted and processed and to allow the “parent of a student or, in the case of a student who has reached the age of 18 years, the student, to appeal to the board against a decision of a teacher or other member of staff of a school”. ASTI believes that this can and should be dealt with as a separate matter by the Minister engaging with the relevant parties, including representatives of parents and students, to agree and approve the necessary procedures.
Overall, we consider that the general elements were not consonant with the concept of education as a common good. The overall thrust of the Charter, and particularly the material the Department of Education and Skills chose to put forward to the media at the time of announcement of the proposed legislation, is redolent of policies which aim to commodify education as primarily a relationship between providers and consumers. The language and tone of the Departmental documentation does not make explicit that education as a common good is a fundamental principle of educational discourse in the Irish context. Indeed, the conception of education as a common good underpins state policy on education.
The ASTI is asking all its members to raise this issue with Oireachtas members and seek appropriate amendments to the legislation to reflect the ASTI’s concerns.
