Rose Conway-Walsh urges national SBHE training, resources

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for all of the statements and the presentations. There's a lot covered at this stage, so I won't go over it all. Obviously, I want to commend the schools who are doing wonderful work. I know I have an ETB and other schools near to me, and I can see how the culture of some schools is absolutely... They have changed around the culture to make it a culture of openness, acceptance, tolerance, and all of the things that were spoken about, I think, last weekend on Pat Kenny in terms of the Sophie Project and what had happened in Coronation Street and the stamp out hatred and intolerance everywhere, and the wonderful work that's been done around that. I suppose I always want... What concerns me is the lack of mainstreaming of good practice and the initiatives, and it's time to stop talking about this, you know? It really, really, really is. And what I'm getting from yourselves, I suppose what I want to know is, Can resources, in terms of extra teaching time, and just in terms of time in general, go an awful long way towards resolving this. It really appeals to me as well around having the mental health supports on site, having them readily available, that things can be dealt with efficiently and effectively, because often what I see happens is, what something starts off as being small, and were it dealt with at a very early stage, it wouldn't then progress into something that becomes quite toxic. Toxic in terms of relationships between teachers and parents and board of managements, and wider communities sometimes, and there's a child in the middle of all of that. So the challenge for us is how do we address it? And so I just want to ask you around what percentage of bullying behaviour could be tackled purely with using all of the policies that we have there at the moment, but purely with targeted resources? Maybe I'll ask you Anne first, seeing your top left of my screen. Thank you. I think you raise a really important issue about, you know, we have lots of interventions, and do we mainstream them? Or do we just keep bringing in some new interventions? And, you know, if I was to say, what can we do that will really make a difference over the next five years? If you look at how the junior cycle framework has been rolled out in the last five, six years, and you look at the strategic approach that was taken to that, a team was set up nationally, a minimum standard of training was provided for everybody who needed to roll out all different subjects. And it was reviewed on a regular basis to see was that happening. And then the inspector come in and they want to see it happening, and they will measure that. I think the same approach is required here, that we need a team of people probably employed to the PDST, the Professional Development Support Service for Teachers. We need them to clearly outline what is the minimum minimum standard of training required to provide a quality SBHE program. I mean, a quality SBHE program that is really engaging our students. And unfortunately, SBHE is not a recognised subject. We do not have qualified SBHE teachers. It's not a recognised subject by the Teaching Council. So therefore, we have to provide all the supplementary training to SBHE teachers. And oftentimes SBHE teachers are teachers who have some hours left in the end of their timetable from their other subjects. So instead of looking at it like that, if we decide these are a priority group of teachers who require a minimum standard of really good quality training over a three year cycle, and then we'll have to start again because you will have changes, you will have new, you'll have reviewed the programmes, you'll have new content as well, and you'll have changes in personnel. So that is a minimum I would do. Alongside that, you need training for leaders. What is my role as a principal and a deputy to lead this out, to lead out that social, personal health education and relationships and sexuality education in our schools? And again, I'm making the same suggestion as what has happened in the junior cycle framework, where the leaders are trained in their leadership role, because this is a very important and legitimate leadership function in all our schools. So if those two things were to happen, that would have a significant change, then we decide what is the standard curriculum that we must see in every school? What is the standard SBHE curriculum? There is a very good SBHE curriculum at the moment that we want to make sure that that is happening everywhere. And then the other programmes that have been introduced over the last number of years, particularly the Lockers programme, because that does deal with cyber bullying and online bullying. That's extremely important. It's a department of education programme, but there's been very little training rolled out in that so far. So I think if that, if I was to say, if anything was to happen from here, that should be the framework, a strategic approach to it. That should be included in the review of the bullying procedures, because they were very good of their time, but obviously a lot has changed since 2013. So all of that should be included and there should be ongoing review. And I suppose the inspectorate, the same way as we have, we have a quality framework for schools at the moment and included in that is our SBHE. We have a wellbeing guidelines that have been renewed again this year 2021, which set out the importance of wellbeing and the health of our students. So there's a really good opportunity, but the really missing piece for me has been the quality standards and the quality training that we need to provide in CPD for our teachers in particular and for our school leaders. The only thing that would concern me, Anna, maybe somebody else would address it. You know, even in what you're talking about there, there's so much bureaucracy, so much more to be done in what already was described in, I think John's statement in terms of highly stressed environments. And if we're putting more stress in that we're continuously measuring, which certainly we should measure the outcomes, but should we be doing more doing and be less measuring? Even you can feel when you're going to a school, whether a school is open or whether the culture, the ethos and all that is right. Within five minutes of being there, you can tell. So surely that's a measurement rather than continuous measurement in a highly stressed environment, which would lead to more bullying behaviour, may even lead to bullying behaviour from teachers and people who are highly stressed. Because when any of us are highly stressed, we're prone to maybe saying something we shouldn't or behaving in a way that we wouldn't like ourselves. You know, so maybe I'll just give that to one of the others if there's time. Yeah, I can come in on that if you like. Yeah, Seamus, go ahead. Sorry. Sorry. I'm looking at two different screens. John, go ahead. It's very valid. And let's get that balance between bureaucracy and just engaging with things professionally at local level, because even if you go back to the anti-bullying procedures in 2013, so they did raise awareness, but there was an aspect of bureaucracy around it that perhaps unnerved people a little bit. You know, even in the language around it, we look back at now anti-bullying procedures. And I can't come up with better language, but I just wonder about the lexicon we use and the way we talk about behavioural issues. And it is a balance. We do need to train people. And that's where we are falling down. And we've taken our eye off the ball a little bit in the context of how we engage professionally with asking people to go into SBHE classes in our school. It's a big issue. But you're right about bureaucracy. We want to be careful about this, because in actual fact, the best resource you can give a school is perhaps to give a principal a little bit of leeway, a couple of hours left over, because the principals by and large will be able to identify the people at school level who might be best to work as a form teacher with a first year class who will have a certain level of empathy, etc, etc. And I think we are falling down a little bit at the moment because I think research wise, we're still flailing around a little bit as to what the best programmes are. I know DCU is doing some work and I know they have the FUSE programme. But exemplification of best practice and what it is, I still think we're in Genesis mode almost in trying to determine what are the programmes that will work best for us going forward. And again, I made a point earlier, we're all in learning mode here. OK, thank you, John. Seamus, do you want to come in with a quick response? I think we need a far more strategic way of managing change in the primary system. At the moment, we're bombarding the system with initiatives. They're coming from all directions and from different and multiple agencies. We need to give principals and schools the time to absorb some of the change. And I do think we need to fundamentally re-look at how we develop policy. There is a tendency to look for international best practice and try and apply it here. I think we need to start looking at the best practice in schools and trying to share that out. Because our schools are doing extraordinary stuff and I think it's time we learn from them and share that out much more. But that requires an infrastructure around schools that principals actually have some time. Principals are under extraordinary pressure. They don't have the supports. And we estimate that something like 60% of primary school principals could benefit from an intervention around stress management. I think that's the key. Thank you, Chair. I think that was double-screening, which was going to a 3rd. I think that's going to roadmap while the schools are doing electronic, which is quite BUILished in the gap which will benefit from them. As we perhaps multiply out all these crazy days. But do we need smaller students. We know as the teachers as well, check in our students and students during operations. Yeah, that's the steep freser of Agora that we all have. So, we regarder the speed of the years whouli intown students were going to become more inclusive.