Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
And you are very welcome to The Debrief, where we look back at some of the biggest stories of the week. And today I'm joined by author and political editor of The Sunday Times, Jennifer Bray, professor of political economy at UCD, Aidan Regan, and writer and columnist Deirdre Reynolds. You're all very welcome to the show. I'm going to start with you, Aidan. Right.
And I'm going to look at a tweet, two tweets that you put up this week. Right.
Chapter 2: What are the biggest stories of the week covered in this episode?
Ireland's primary schools are built for the single earner household. The economy moved on. The school day didn't. The second tweet, primary teaching is a part-time job, a beautiful and worthy one that should be well paid, but is part-time.
Yeah, the second tweet is probably a little bit unfair, you know.
I can't imagine that made you very popular at the school gates this week.
No, but the more serious point is that... I think as most parents will understand, like if you don't have flexibility in your job, I don't know how people manage kids in primary school. I mean, the one o'clock finish. for kind of younger kids, two o'clock finish, you need to have a lot of flexibility and you need to have obviously an afterschool system that's integrated.
So the real issue here is that I think it is true that the primary school system is designed on the assumption that there's somebody at home, right? And that world doesn't really exist anymore. It's kind of designed on the assumption typically it's the woman at home. And we haven't really developed an integrated afterschool system yet.
So you don't necessarily think that the school day should be a little bit longer?
No, I think pedagogically, the school day is probably about right in terms of the kid in class teaching time. And it is true, for example, Irish teachers actually work more than the average OECD. whatever about the summer's off and stuff, but they do work.
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Chapter 3: How does Aidan Regan critique the Irish primary school system?
And there's obviously a lot of emotional labour involved. But I think the best practice model, if you're looking at Sweden or Denmark or Germany, where you have a school system where you have, yes, you're in class pedagogical teaching of the kids, but it's integrated with the after school system. You know, there's a recognition that most people are working full time.
So it has to be a continuous day, basically from nine to five in the kids' best interest. We don't have that. It's a bit of a kind of, oh, are you lucky enough to have the after school on site or not? You have to pick the kids up. You have to bring them somewhere else. Or do you have to get a child minder? So we don't really have a proper integrated after school system.
I think that's the big problem. They're kind of completely siloed. The school does one thing. The after school does something else. It's not like it's integrated into what's in the best interest of the kids. How do we put together a proper programme for kids during that period of time? So, yeah, that's kind of the more point.
I think teachers deserve to be very well paid and deserve their time off.
And you don't think it's part time work?
I mean, look, let's be honest. Like if you have two or three months off a year, like that's not full time work. I don't mean that in any bad way.
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Chapter 4: What challenges do parents face with primary school hours?
That's like if you had three months off or two months off, would you consider yourself to be working full time? Probably not. No. And I don't mean it like it's not meant to be a mean statement. It's just that actually it's a quite it's quite a good job to have. It gives you a lot of flexibility.
And come the summertime with the after school or with the summer camps, as I think we all know, it's that time of year where everybody's thinking, well, how do I get my kids? What am I going to do in July and August? Well, we have to get into the summer camps. But if you're a teacher, you don't really have that problem because you're at home with your kids.
So I think a lot like it's good that we value our private school system. It's good that we value our teachers and it's good that we have that flexibility. But it is kind of prefaced on the assumption that there's somebody at home.
Jennifer? I think you're such a brave man putting out a tweet like that. And also, you know yourself, even if you have like a nuanced set of lengthy tweets, the one thing people are going to remember is the part-time comment. I have a lot of friends who are teachers and...
With the greatest of respect to you now, I just think that I just couldn't, I really disagree with the statement, not because I think it's a popular thing to say, but just because of the experiences of friends of mine who are teachers. And I think it is true that obviously it's much handier during the summer, but their experience during the school year is...
is from what I'm being told, there's a huge level of burnout. And also like when you're a teacher nowadays, it seems you're not only just expected to be a teacher, you're also expected to be tanned, other different kinds of things. And almost this kind of presumption you'd also be a former babysitter or, you know, a counsellor. And there's all these extra things that are
constantly being added on and I just don't know if that's fully taken into account and now we have kind of situations as well where you know there's a huge and rightful focus on special educational needs but there are a lot of teachers who are taking on the administrative burden of that particularly after school hours so certainly the feedback I've received from friends who are teachers is that they're completely burnt out.
They have all these additional duties. And I think one of the things someone said to me recently kind of made me sad was the joy of it sometimes can disappear. And I thought that was I thought I did think that was kind of sad to hear.
And class sizes are big as well. That's the thing.
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Chapter 5: How do teachers perceive their workload and compensation?
163 euro and 66 so far will be on my next bill. So it's not like Netflix or Audible where I can choose to get rid of those. And I totally agree, obviously, about public transport. I'm in an area where... I do not have the option of either a bus or a train.
I would have to physically, I would have to drive to even get the bus and then I'd have to park my car up for the day or I'd have to maybe drive, get a bus, get a train. You know, I'm not on a connected route. So there's that issue.
And also I do think for women as well, there's an issue of safety because I work on Talbot Street, even though we're constantly being told by minister after minister that Dublin is a safe city. If I want to get from my home to work physically, First of all, it's more time efficient to hop in the car.
And second of all, it's safer because I'm not going to be hanging around Talbot Street or bus hours at night or walking up to O'Connell Street to get a bus. I'm sorry.
What do you think, Jennifer, is the short term fix here? Or is there a short term fix? Or do we just have to accept, look, the M50 is congested. We knew there was going to be capacity issues. We were reaching max capacity a number of years ago. We thankfully had COVID. Well, not thankfully had COVID, but, you know, it actually bought you a couple of years and we had...
The whole culture of working from home had bought the government a bit more time, but they didn't do anything really to address the capacity issues. So my question is, is there a short-term fix here?
I don't think there is a short-term fix. And I don't like the way often conversations about how to address things always seem to end up in consumers paying more. It's always, okay, pay more, pay more. Everything costs more. Every single bill, everything. It's always, and it's not the answer, particularly when people are already so hard-pressed. I mean...
I've just come off a week of covering the different debates in the DƔil about the cost of living and the stories that the different TDs are bringing into the DƔil about people being forced to choose between, you know, their heating and their food and stuff. So people are already right up against it. And I think adding more costs on is not the answer.
The way I look at it is it is a longer term thing and it depresses the life out of me because the answer is things like the Metrolink crisis. And it really, really is so frustrating when you hear when it's the same conversation year after year about we're in this part of the process where now we're held up. OK, now we're in the next part of the process. Now we're held up.
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