Supervision outside school hours to be affected by action

The Irish National Teachers' Organisation has said that some schools may not be able to supervise children outside of school hours next week due to industrial action by its members.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Assistant General Secretary of the INTO Máirín Ní Chéileachair said teachers are contracted to supervise the children during the school day, during their break around 11am and at their lunch break.

However, some schools also use the Croke Park hours to provide extra supervision in the morning and after school to facilitate an early drop off and a later pick up.

But she said this will no longer be facilitated in those schools.

Last month Primary school teachers, who are members of the INTO, voted to begin industrial action in October over delays in agreeing a new public sector pay deal.

The action will initially take the form of a work-to-rule from 5 October. INTO members will also join with fellow public sector workers in a proposed nationwide strike on Wednesday 14 October.

From Monday, teachers will stop engaging with Croke Park hours, which are an allocation of hours that they complete outside of their school working day of five hours and 40 minutes.

Some parents have been told not to drop their children off to school early from Monday.

"In schools where school teachers are using their Croke Park hours to take in children into the schoolyard and supervise them at 8.30am, that will stop," she said.

Ms Ní Chéileachair said the responsibility for the safety of children on the school grounds lies with a school’s Board of Management.

"Every board of management who uses Croke Parkers, where [they] are used to do the supervision, have been told to carry out a safety assessment or risk assessment and if it's not safe for children to be dropped without supervision, then they must inform the parents that the school cannot be opened until school officially starts," she said.

Ms Ní Chéileachair said other activities, like matches or swimming lessons, will not be affected.

"If it's not officially used as a Croke Park hour, so activities that take place during the school day, like bringing children on a bus to swimming or bringing children to matches, that's not going to be impacted," she said.

"Other voluntary activities that teachers do outside of school hours, like training school teams ... and engaging with other activities outside of the school day that they do voluntarily are not impacted by this directive," she added.

Ms Ní Chéileachair said teachers want the Government to enter into pay talks "in good faith".

"We are not alone in this, all of the public service unions within the Irish Congress of Trade Unions have balloted their members and they want the government to enter into talks in good faith with the public service unions to negotiate a new pay agreement," she said.

She said the "pay crisis" within the public service needed to be addressed.

"It's the first time in 17 years that teachers have balloted for industrial action. The INTO has not done this lightly," she said.

"Nearly 60% of our members turned up in person to polling stations and 99.5% of them said that they were willing to engage in industrial action up to and including strikes.

"They don't do it for fun. We're very serious about this. There is a crisis in the public service," she added.