Editorial: ​Farcical state of affairs as Sinn Fein is helping to block school inspections in Northern Ireland

Stormont has presided over the disgrace that schools in Northern Ireland have few inspections over the last decade.

​There were very few for eight years, which made the province unique in the UK or Ireland. It was the result of weak politicians who do not have the confidence to challenge unions.

Now inspections have resumed but there is a risk of teacher strikes derailing them again.

It should not even need to be said that school inspections are needed to ensure that there is quality and up to date teaching, and to ascertain what parts of the school might need to improve things for the wellbeing of pupils. Inspections help to identify schools that are doing well, and schools that are doing less well, and thus help to ensure that the educational sector can learn from best practice in the classroom.

There was a long-running industrial action by teachers around inspections, which helps to explain why there were so few of them. Now that the DUP minister Paul Givan is trying to make strikes less likely in his Education Inspections Bill, Sinn Fein has criticised the legislation as an “attack on the employment rights of teachers’ and an attempt to undermine their right to lawful industrial action”.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s First Minister – the Sinn Fein vice president Michelle O’Neill – is seeking praise because her party is allowing the bill to be debated in the assembly.

Yet financial penalties and a potential criminal conviction clause have been removed at Sinn Fein’s request and the bill has been supported at the executive.

This is a farcical state of affairs, that again goes to the question of whether Northern Ireland is governable under Sinn Fein, such is its obsession with ending the province. In this case it is helping to block school inspections, and that is deeply irresponsible.