Quality and Standards in Human Services in Ireland - the NESC ...

STAKEHOLDER RESPONSIBILITIES 35However, the implementation of Section 24 18 of the Education Act 1998 inSeptember 2009 places a statutory responsibility on the BOM in relation toperformance of individual teachers in their school, and provides for the suspensionand dismissal of underperforming teachers by BOMs. These new agreed proceduresprovide for two separate and independent strands of accountability: Procedures relating to professional competence issues; and Procedures relating to work conduct and matters other than professionalcompetence.These new procedures represent quite a step-change for many school BOMs who,in the past, viewed their role as purely administrative, and left issues relating toteaching and learning to the education professionals in the school. According toBOM representatives at primary level, it would have been rare to find issues relatingto teaching and learning on the agenda for BOM meetings. In the past, it was alsounlikely that these BOMs, while noting the content of a WSE report, would have feltthat they should involve themselves in issues relating to teaching and learningstandards because they believed that this was an issue for the educationprofessionals in their school, and that they were a step removed from this.However, that is not to say that primary school BOMs have not taken appropriatesteps in response to any serious and detrimental issues that might have beenidentified in the WSE report. According to a stakeholder interviewed for this report,BOMs at post-primary are sometimes more engaged in the teaching and learningoutcomes within their school, since it is during these years that students and theirparents become increasingly focused on academic achievement for the purposes ofdeciding career paths and choosing college courses. These schools are alsoconcerned with attracting pupils and therefore a school’s academic achievementrecord is important from the perspective of a BOM.During the last decade, BOMs have also been occupied in meeting theirresponsibilities and the achievement of standards in a range of areas for whichthere has been an increasing amount of legislation – health and safety, childprotection issues – as well as adapting school buildings to facilitate the inclusion ofchildren with special needs. Another challenging issue relating to primary schoolBOMs is the significant number of schools who do not have administrative principalteachers, which means that there is very little time for strategic thinking andplanning, by comparison with schools that have a non-teaching principal. In recentyears, however, teaching principals have been granted a number of days of releasetime to enable them to carry out their administrative duties.Thus, school BOMs are responsible for a highly diverse range and complex set ofissues in the management of schools. This issue was highlighted in the recentDepartment of Public Expenditure and Reform Organisational Review Programme18This section does not apply to teachers or other staff of a school that is established or maintained by avocational educational committee.