Teaching union passes no confidence vote on NI schools inspector

Noelle Buick said she was "disappointed" at the line the ATL union had taken

One of the largest teaching unions has overwhelmingly passed a motion of no confidence in Northern Ireland's chief inspector of schools, Noelle Buick.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) passed the motion on the first day of its annual conference in Liverpool.

The ATL is one of the three main teaching unions in the UK.

Ms Buick said she was "disappointed" at the line that the union had taken.

One of the teachers behind the motion, Mark Montgomery, told the conference that it was criticising both "an office and organisation".

He said the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) "holds schools and individuals accountable, while refusing to acknowledge that it should be held accountable in the event of an appeal against its findings".

Independence

The ATL had previously called for appeals against school inspections to be carried out by staff outside the ETI, and for a school's inspection report to be revised if an appeal succeeded.

Mr Montgomery said it was not appropriate that the appeals process was carried out by the ETI themselves.

"In Northern Ireland, this appeals process is in-house and the chief inspector's office has the final say," he said.

"Having an in-house appeals procedure is not healthy for the teaching profession."

Mark Montgomery said the appeals process should not be conducted "in-house"

However, in a letter to the ATL, Ms Buick said there had been considerable engagement between the ETI and the union.

"The ETI complaints procedure can be used to make a formal complaint about any aspect of ETI's work," she said.

She said that it complied with best practice across all government departments and was agreed with the Northern Ireland Assembly ombudsman.

"Inspection is a powerful lever for raising standards and tackling underachievement to ensure learners get the best possible education," said Ms Buick.

Mark Langhammer, director of ATL Northern Ireland, told BBC Northern Ireland's Good Morning Ulster: "What the behaviours that our members and our teachers complain about is that they are measured against very narrow metrics, that the inspections are high stakes, very data driven, very bureaucratic.

"And, in terms of what happens in schools, excessive weighing and measuring tactics."

The ETI observes teaching in Northern Ireland education bodies and there have been recent changes to the inspection process.

These include reducing the notice a school gets for an inspection to two weeks and more oral feedback for teachers.

Schools that are judged to need urgent or important improvement get a quicker follow-up inspection, within 12 to 18 months.

There are also plans for follow-up visits for all high-performing schools three years after a full inspection, in order to sustain improvement.