Sense of déjà vu as report clashes with teacher talks

The email landed at around midday on the Easter Bank Holiday Monday.

The Department of Education would publish a major report on primary school patronage first thing on Tuesday morning.

Education journalists were getting the information ahead of time - under embargo - so that we could write up our stories in advance.

How frustrating.

With the country's three teacher trade union conferences just getting under way, for us education journalists Monday and Tuesday were already promising to be among the busiest days of the year, and then there was this major report to get our heads around on top of everything else.

That was in April of 2012.

The report was from the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism - a significant exercise commissioned by then minister for education Ruairi Quinn to examine how best to reform primary education to cater for the growing number of families in Ireland who were not Catholic.

This week there was a distinct sense of déjà vu.

Once again, a Minister for Education was seeking to dominate the Easter week agenda with the publication of a major survey of parents on the sensitive subject of school religious ethos.

Once again at lunchtime on Monday an email landed - with survey findings and planned actions under embargo for Tuesday morning.

Every Easter the same battle plays out.

As delegates from the country's three teacher trade unions meet at venues across the country, their unions know this is their golden opportunity to get their messages out to the public; how teachers are struggling, how the system needs resourcing, how the nation’s children and young people are being failed.

But every year the Government has other ideas and the minister of the day seeks to counter the narrative with whatever they can.

This year the big industrial issue at the conferences was pay.

Against an ever-intensifying cost-of-living crisis, teachers are struggling and they are angry.

They can’t afford housing, they can’t afford their daily commute - they called for substantial pay rises as part of the next national pay agreement so that they can afford to live.

They also wanted to tell parents especially that children are struggling in classes that are too large; that changes to Leaving Certificate assessment could actually add to the stress felt by students; that without wider therapeutic supports for children, without housing for families, without funding to address poverty - children and young people are being failed.

The minister and the Department of Education stole much of the limelight on Tuesday with important survey findings which show a significant amount of parents in religious-run primary schools - in the main Catholic schools - unhappy with that ethos.

When Minister Hildegarde Naughton met journalists on Tuesday morning, most of the questions she was asked by journalists related to the survey findings, not teacher demands.

We asked: What is going to happen now?

Why has the department not published all of the findings of the survey?

Including the views of the parents of pre-school children?

The minister told us that we now had a "real picture" of what parents wanted but she said any change would ultimately be a matter for school patrons, that means the Catholic bishops in the case of the majority of schools.

"A clever move to distract from the unions' issues," one seasoned observer mused.

INTO officials muttered and grumbled.

Fourteen years earlier another minister had used the same issue - that of patronage - to distract.

Back then, austerity was biting hard and cuts were the order of the day.

Interestingly, a big topic of debate across all three teacher conferences this year was ongoing efforts to have allowances cut from teachers' pay during those years of austerity finally restored.

Much of what happened all those years ago remains unfinished business for teachers to this day.

Interesting also to note that despite major reports and many surveys, little has changed too since 2012 when it comes to school patronage.

The report published back then made a series of recommendations for change.

Ruairi Quinn spoke of 50% of Catholic primary schools switching to a different patronage.

The Irish Times wrote "it is ...

clear Irish education is on the threshold of historic change".

But that was not to be.

The news cycle began slowly this week.

The Easter bank holiday was quiet on the domestic news front and the week ahead looked quiet too.

News editors were hungry for content from the teacher conferences; what teachers were saying, what the minister had up her sleeve.

In the end it was the farmers and the hauliers who provided the biggest distraction.

This week they stole the show.