Strike to close secondary schools tomorrow

Secondary schools nationwide, including 10 in County Cavan, will close tomorrow (Tuesday), December 2, as teachers protest against proposed changes to Junior Cycle education.
Members of the two main teaching unions - the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) and Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) - will picket outside the schools from 8.30am on the day, expressing their opposition to a new regime that would include teachers assessing their own students’ work.
ASTI members met in the Cavan Crystal Hotel on Monday of last week to discuss the issues and take direction on how the protest will operate on the ground.
The ASTI spokesperson for Cavan and Monaghan, Denyse Hughes, told the Celt yesterday that this was “a last resort” and both unions had a strong mandate from their members for industrial action.
Nationally, some 27,000 teachers in 730 schools will leave their classrooms for the day’s stoppage, disrupting education for some 340,000 pupils. The unions have warned that if the Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan does not row back on the proposal to have teachers assess their own students, a second stoppage will go ahead in January.

Significant
The union ballots in favour of strike pre-dated a compromise deal offered by Minister O’Sullivan and she’s urging the unions to reballot their members on new proposals. “Taking people out of school for a day is significant,” the minister has said.
The row over junior cycle reform dates back to the previous minister, Ruairi Quinn, who announced the abolition of the State certificate - the Junior Cert - and the replacement of the traditional exams with teachers assessing their own students for a school-based award.
However, following talks, Minister O’Sullivan has now offered to retain State certification - accounting for 60% of the overall marks with assessments, marked by teachers, making up the remaining 40%. The Minister had said that 15% of those papers would be monitored by the State Examinations Commission (SEC) to ensure consistency.
Accepting that the Minister has rowed back, Ms Walsh told the Celt that the main sticking point - the assessment by teachers of their own students - has not changed.
“It’s not about pay, it’s about fairness and equality for our students. This will not be a fair system. We want equality among schools in the area, a system that is fair and transparent and objective,” she said.
“This is changing our profession to being a judge and jury system and would really affect the dynamics in the classroom,” added Ms Walsh, a teacher in St Mary’s College in Dundalk.
“We support different modes of assessment, that is not the issue. We want these components externally assessed,” she further explained.

Teachers to assess own children?
One teacher based in a County Cavan school, who did not wish to be named, who was at the ASTI branch meeting on Monday night, told the Celt that the current system, as proposed, would see teachers assessing, in some cases, their neighbours, their relatives and perhaps even their own children.
“We’re only human,” he said. “It’s impossible to be objective if you know the kid and are aware there’s problems at home,” he added, also pointing out “you could then have parents questioning the grades you give their children”.

While the teachers support reform of the junior cycle, they say they want that reform to be right and properly resourced.

For example, they have expressed concern about the capacity of schools to deliver the level of change envisaged and ask how that will be resourced.
These issues, they say, all need to be addressed in detail before anything can be agreed.