Why Irish teachers should vote YES for industrial action

Tuesday April 16, 2013. Finally, a good day to be an Irish Trade Unionist. Even better, a good day to be a member of a teachers union. It was fitting that the message that cutting wages reduces spending power and weakens the economy came from workers. That the coalition find it hard to understand why public servants found ‘Croke Park 2′ difficult to stomach is itself hard to understand.
We are told that people in private sector employment have taken pain too, that if they were asked to vote on further cuts they also would have said no. Why weren’t they asked? Because many of them aren’t in trade unions, the power of our No vote comes from the power of our unions.

And the three teacher unions, the ASTI, the INTO and the TUI, find themselves in a position they’ve not been in for a generation, they have huge goodwill among members, it is rare for all teachers, or indeed the huge majority in my own union the ASTI to be on the same page. The task for unions leaders now is to bring the members with us, to do that delicate job of leading and following at the same time.
I’ve said before that teachers have felt for a generation that they have no real say in shaping their work lives but there is a solidarity within schools now, and the teacher unions are right to capitalise on that. A strong approach to resisting further attacks on pay and conditions is essential.

But let’s get to the ballot.
There are already signs of scaremongering from government ministers: that ‘we have no money’ , that there will be deeper cuts (remember D-PER – Department for Public Expenditure and Reform), that there will be compulsory redundancies, that there’s no need to ballot for industrial action because a deal will be done before we can act.
Remember though these are the same people who say ‘there is no alternative’ to ‘Croke Park 2′, that teachers should ideally work a forty hour week. These are the people who started the last round of negotiations with a call for five extra hours teaching (look what happened in Denmark when they tried this), who still threaten all public servants with cuts to salaries across the board and who knows what to conditions. These are the same elected representatives who wish to ignore the votes of two-thirds of public servants and over 75% of all teachers. So much for democracy.

Why should we ballot then if our political leaders prefer to ignore us, prefer to threaten or frighten us?
The first reason is to send a message THAT WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH. That to single out public servants in this way is dishonest, short-sighted and vindictive. The least we can do is remind them that when teachers speak together we shout loudly for fairness and equity.
The second reason is to allow our unions to act if and when the coalition announces a unilateral cut in teachers’ pay in July. Don’t believe them when they say we’d be better off caving in and accepting a ‘tweaked deal’, 85% OF US SAID NO, we have strength in our numbers.
For the three teacher unions anything less than a resounding yes vote will be a sign for those in the newspapers and in government who wish to undermine us at every turn that we were weak or disunited. A Yes vote from members of the ASTI, INTO and TUI will strengthen teachers’ hand in any negotiations to replace ‘Croke Park 2′ with a fairer, more reasoned agreement. Voting no this time will give them the nod to cut again and again.
We need that Yes because we need a ballot to embark on any industrial action, and we must not be the first to break the existing agreements, let them do that by changing our conditions or cutting our salaries. A Yes will give us the authority to direct members to withdraw from whichever activities we decide or indeed ultimately to take strike action. Whichever of those actions are undertaken, with the power of a strong Yes vote we will undertake them together, united and organised, as unions should be.
The wording of the ballot allows teachers to respond to the government in a measured, co-ordinated way. We could stop doing ‘Croke Park hours’, the bane of many a teacher’s life; we might not cooperate with new programmes being introduced to schools; we could work to rule or ultimately go on strike. Gradual escalation would be preferable, but strategy will be decided, as usual, after consulting members.
There is now also an opportunity to rebuild teacher unions. We all talk about how best to reach out to members at school level and how to move beyond the minority of activists to make teacher unionism relevant to much wider groups of workers. This is how: bring them together to oppose the latest attack on our profession, through solidarity between teachers and between their unions.
Despite the apparent unity between teacher’s unions on the rejection of the latest by the coalition to cut pay and worsen conditions, there is still much to concern teachers. The increased presence of data collection, the spectre of standardised tests, the prospect of teachers being subjected to further deep cuts to pay and the worsening of conditions all jostle for the attention of teacher activists. The three teachers unions, the ASTI, the INTO and the TUI have found common ground at least on the attack on the working wages and conditions of work, good old fashioned union concerns.
A strategy for unity on these issues make sense for teachers. The rejection by those three unions of ‘Croke Park 2′ by significant majorities (three of the highest ‘no’ votes of the public sector unions) shows they share at least a strong case for asking for the offer to be renegotiated. Teachers’ unions are at a crossroads in their history.

Teachers need their union, unions needs unity and we need unity on this issue between unions.

Why teachers should vote no to ‘Croke Park 2′

In the next few weeks Irish teachers will be asked to vote on new proposals on their pay and conditions which emerged from negotiations between public sector unions and the government. The ASTI’s Standing Committee has recommended that members vote no to these proposals and I want to outline why.

First some context
After two weeks of circling each other the details of an agreement were negotiated on the last weekend in February. In the last 48 hours details of the proposals began to emerge and were made public on February 25. Standing Committee met on Wednesday February 27 and deferred a decision on a recommendation to the following week. Having widely consulted members and received clarification from the government side on some but not all areas we had questions on, Standing Committee categorically decided to recommend to members that they reject the proposals as presented.

The details of the proposals

CUTS TO SALARIES
Teachers who earn in excess of €65,000 will receive a 5.5% cut on their whole salary and allowances, this rises to 8% for the highest earning teachers who are mainly in managerial positions.

SUPERVISION AND SUBSTITUTION
Previously teachers were paid for opting to timetable 37 hours of S&S p.a. or one hour thirty minutes maximum per week. Now EVERY teacher will have to agree to be effectively ‘on call’ for 49 hours p.a. or two hours fifteen minutes per week for no payment and without the possibility of opting out. The extra 45 minutes will have to be used for substitution and can now be used to cover uncertified leave and official school business or the first day of certified sick leave, death in family leave, force majeure leave or illness in family leave. Teachers will have to be placed on rota to cover five periods instead of three.
The proposals state that anyone who is hit by a pay cut and the loss of S&S will only be hit once, though how this to be achieved is unclear.
There is no clarity on what will happen to the pension payments some teachers made from the allowance for S&S over the last decade or more.
Payment will cease from September 2013, if the proposals are accepted.

INCREMENTAL PAY
For those teachers earning less than €65,000 there will be two 15 month incremental periods starting next September, instead of an increment being paid in September 2014, for example, it will be paid in December 2014, and the following increment will come in March 2016.
For those earning between €65,000 there will be a freeze on increments for three years.
It is also worth noting that for job-sharers the cuts and freezes will calculated on a whole time equivalent salary.

NEW ENTRANTS
It seemed that one of the positives from the talks was some rowing back on the cuts suffered by new entrants in recent years. Adjustments have been agreed to their incremental pay scale which will be significant over a whole career. This is the only pay rise for any group in the negotiations. However, it has to be said that new entrants will also lose S&S payments and those who rely on casual work will be squeezed by the changes to what S&S can be used for.

FIXED TERM TEACHERS’ PANEL
A positive from the new arrangements would be the securing of a panel system for the redeployment of fixed term teachers. When CIDs have been agreed and the existing redeployment scheme is dealt with fixed term teachers could then avail of redeployment.

CROSSOVER OF TWO AGREEMENTS
The proposals are on top of Croke Park 1, so the 33 hours, parent-teacher meetings out of school time etc. will continue as before.

PENSION LEVY
A reduction from 5% to 2.5% for the lowest €15,000 to €20,000 band, a saving of €110 p.a.

RETIREMENT
The DES has agreed to allow teachers to retire before August 31 2014 on their pre-cut pension and lump sum, but of course that too depends on the outcome of a ballot.

So, why vote no?
For those who face pay cuts we have essentially clarified that we don’t have or won’t get the clarity necessary for them to make an informed decision. The best we can say is the cuts will apply for the length of any agreement. The worst we can compemplate is that before the end of this proposed agreement the government will come asking for more, that’s what happened with ‘Croke Park 1′.
The S&S cut is an onerous pay cut for those who used to do it; for those who didn’t it is a dramatic change to their conditions of work, in fact it’s a significant change for all of us because the commitment is no longer voluntary, remember that some objected to the idea of supervising at all back in 2002 because they wanted to just teach.
New entrants are offered about a third of the cuts they’ve suffered in the past two years (15-20%), but for many of them the inequity between their incomes and those of the 2010 entrants still rankles. They will also lose out on S&S payments and for those struggling to find work, opportunities for a day here and there to teach will be gone with the extension of S&S to cover almost all kinds of absence.
For fixed term teachers there is a benefit in this document, in theory, and the negotiators should be commended in delivering something for them; but don’t be quick to jump for joy, only after every other group is considered for redeployment will this growing number of fixed term teachers who must move from school to with no tenure each year receive any stability.

The cuts in education so far have been imposed; it seems to me that these proposals document are a new dawn​ because if we are to agree to these changes we are inviting the cuts. For the first time in our history trade unions have been asked to place pay cuts on the table for their members. The hope of those who support the proposals seems to be that this will be the last time we are asked to forfeit pay and conditions ‘in the national interest’. This is also an erosion of the conditions of work of teachers, conditions that, once gone, will be nigh on impossible to win back. There is no doubt that the move is on towards a set school day which will include S&S and ‘Croke Park hours’.
If trade unions decide in a ballot that they don’t want it, the government has signalled its intent to ignore that democratic decision and legislate for pay cuts anyway. Some ‘deal’! People vote with a gun to their heads. Those selling the proposals as the only show in town need to remember that leadership though isn’t about slicing up trade unions into ‘yes’ and ‘no’ camps, or diving teachers into those who’ll lose a bit and those who’ll lose more, leadership is about​ making sure honesty for all workers in other sectors in how they are advised.

What next?
A ballot will be held of all members, the deadline for return of ballots is April 12th.

We need to plan; the clearest thing we know today is what will happen if members vote yes, but we must be ready if and when the document is rejected. To that end Annual Convention will discuss the proposals in full on April 1 next.

Teachers, all teachers, will be worse off after this deal. For the preservation of our pay and conditions, for our profession, for the opportunity to stand up and say no more, these are proposals we have to reject.

Fintan O’Mahony
Standing Committee, Region 8
Natnif2@yahoo.ie
Twitter.com/levdavidovic

Leadership in Irish education

Leadership…

We hear about leadership all the time. In politics it’s used as a cop out when you want to make a decision without listening, in life it’s expounded on by ‘dragons’ with four hours of sleep a night and a ‘headcount’ to reduce.
But what is leadership in education?
Sure, in our classrooms and lecture halls we lead from the front. We’re that performance led type leader who leads by doing, showing, explaining, coaxing. Dedication to the subject, the methods we use, the technology we introduce, the voice, the heart, the enthusiasm all count for students and for ourselves.
But what of leading our schools, our colleagues, the communities that form around the buildings we visit everyday to lead students as set out above? The effort to do those things right that makes us leaders in the room often in the early days of teaching to focus exclusively on the students, rightly. Around us though in those early days there have to be people who show by professional example what it means to be a teacher. I had those people around me, they made me feel safe and gave me courage, when I had a problem they said: ‘here’s what you’ll do…’ And I did it and it worked and I’m still doing it.
So. There are classroom leaders and there are staff room leaders, and they crossover, they can be the same people, that’s a school you know is work.
Then there are teachers who become managers. They have to sink or swim, learning how to manage teachers, parents, students, as well as finance and set the tone for a school is no small task. In Ireland we don’t tend to see these managers as drivers of curricular change, but all that might change if we get the reforms some of them want: on top of reporting to the National Education Welfare Board, the Department of Education and Skills, not to mention the Boards of Management of their own schools the proposition of some Principals having control too over the curricular direction of a school at Junior Cycle fills some of them, and some of those they lead, with dread. Of course the further away from the classroom these leaders are the less their job is about education and more about being perceived as a leader.
I’m sure the Minister for Education himself, Ruairi Quinn would say he is ultimately the leader in Irish education. But swayed as he seems to be by business, the media or worst of all the money men in Finance and the Department of Public Expenditure (was there ever devised a more appropriate acronym for people who cut and cut than D-PER?), he doesn’t seem to lead so much as follow. He and his department don’t seem to bother with what the views of people in classrooms think. We have reached a roadblock that threatens standstill when a minister can ignore teachers entirely an unilaterally change the secondary school curriculum without even giving notice to teachers.
Why were teachers removed from the dialogue on education reform? How did education leaders let this to happen? Who stood up for education?
We teach in a world where the outside influences bang on the doors of our schools, and they have done for years, not least the deepening social consequences of the economic disaster no student of ours had a hand in. These and other political decisions like those mentioned above complicate the job of teachers and alienate them from the solutions.
We resist so little though. We are accused so often of lying down before these threats.
That is why we now need to strengthen our resolve through the only educational leadership I haven’t mentioned so far, our teachers’ unions. Battered, derided and ignored by many teachers without doubt, the teacher unions remain the only leaders that will listen when we shout, that will act on our behalf, nationally.
That is why the ASTI has filled the gap the Minister left when he decided to shift the ground beneath us on Junior Cycle reform by asking teachers what they think of the plan. They aren’t happy. They want leadership and they know that only by asking teachers who actually teach can you lead them forward. They also speak of demoralisation and being cowed into accepting whatever is thrown at them.
Only through concerted and united action will we able to say we stood up for education, that we were leaders.
Let’s leave the economics gurus to their crystal balls and the media to ‘top stories’, it’s time for educators to take back education.

Attend the public session on Junior Cycle Reform at the ASTI Convention in Wexford on April 2nd

Why do teachers feel alienated?

It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return…

from Mirror in February by Thomas Kinsella

The right word to use for the relationship between teachers and the world they try daily to change one student at a time is alienation.
Teachers feel they are the victims of forces beyond their control: economic forces, political and social forces, the force of negative public discourse. None of this is new, it has been the case for years that education and those who deliver it have been frustrated by the way their professional opinions have been excluded from the process of decision making. They have felt for a generation that they have no real say in shaping their work lives or determining how best to use education as anything more than a clinical data gathering exercise.
Many teachers may not have come to understand this yet, many may not have articulated it or even had time to think about it, but they feel it. This alienation expresses itself in the shortness of many teaching careers, the ‘muddling through’ cuts to education, the unwillingness to enter into conversations about public service with neighbours friend or family, the inability to recommend teaching as a profession to young graduates. If we have become insensitive to the damage all this does to our profession, if we are fooled into thinking that our alienation is normal and a sign of how we are meant to react to constant criticism from political ‘leaders’ and media ‘commentators’, then we will never recover.
We are encouraged to turn on each other: retired teachers, younger teachers, or unions leaders are ‘the problem’. But education shouldn’t be part of the rat race, teachers shouldn’t be scrambling around, afraid to raise their heads or hands above the ramparts to reject this alienation and reject the pressure of society that would have you teach for any other reason than to educate children. Education is for growth not exams, for questions and answers, not for pat solutions or the easy way out. We have become addicted to silence in the face of a storm of negative commentary, the dignity and pride we should feel are stripped away and that alienated feeling is all that’s left.
Schools are places where the insidious pressures of society that seek out those who are to to blame should not hold sway. Those pressures force us to be silent in the face of injustice in case it damages our chance of fitting in to the rat race. Teachers, those forces strip away your dignity, your sense of justice, your instinct for fairness.
When they reduce education to economic arguments for making profit they reduce it to nothingness. There is no price too high for the emancipation an individual can achieve through education. It becomes, or course, a matter of control, not of freedom, and the concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. When educators and those to be educated are excluded from decision making, democracy is replaced by profit and loss and you create a society where success is judged by the extent of your economic success, and teachers/students/citizens are reduced to units of production.
And that’s where the alienation comes in: somewhere someone makes the decision that education is measurable, that you either measure up or you are nothing; that’s what alienates teachers: they refuse to write people off. Considering what is human is not what the bean counters do. To measure educational attainment in terms of money spent denies us the opportunity to enrich the lives of all our citizens, we need to place education at the centre of our society, not marginalise it.
Give teachers credit, they equip people for life, not to be economic units, but to be social contributors.
Teachers: don’t give in to this pressure, don’t feel alienated from the world around you, keep on keeping on, they won’t realise it now but your work matters, and education shouldn’t be subject to financial straightjacketing.

A teacher is born

I have taken a breather from twitter for a while. With good reason. Something that doesn’t happen that often (only for the third time for me) has stopped everything. I’m not in school, I’m not tweeting, not reading much. In the midst of times when we’ve been reminded of how children’s lives are precious beyond belief we’ve had a third daughter. She’s as beautiful as her mother, and alert as her two big sisters and has only 24 hours after she was born burrowed herself into our hearts.
The birth of a child makes a husband appreciate his wife in ways words cannot express, the birth of a daughter brings out the guardian in a father, the birth of a third daughter gets you thinking. I’ve learned more from my first two girls than I ever will in a classroom or online. So Nora is my newest teacher, she’ll teach me to be more patient, stop me when I’m prattling on about some castle or other, ask the questions I don’t want to answer and answer the questions I wouldn’t dare ask. My newest teacher.

A response to David McWilliams from a teacher

I’ve spent a few weeks rereading and rereading an article from David McWilliams about education. This post won’t intend to pick a fight with Mr McWilliams, because while I know nothing about economics, I don’t publish or speak publicly on the topic. Unfortunately, Mr McWilliams knows nothing about education, but doesn’t have the reserve to leave it to those who are in the know.
His article begins by stating that the time has come to discuss teaching and education so that we can ‘get the best out of our people’. Line one: first mistake. Education, despite what some might have you believe is not a factory in which ‘our people’ are turned out in regular form like planks from a saw mill.

Rather schools are places where individuals move at their own pace, encouraged by their teachers and their parents, and where achievement is unmeasurable, a bit like trying to calculate how an economy will perform, it’s not an exact science.
The education system ‘as currently devised’, Mr McWilliams asserts is based on ‘rote-learning,… a grind based reward system’ and it ‘terrorises many hundreds of thousands of children, scarring them with stigmas and insecurities which they carry with them for life.’ Strong stuff, but lazy thinking from start to finish. The education system isn’t based on rote learning, in fact students with independent thought are reward for their work above a baseline understanding of facts and figures that any economist could, or should, grasp. Strikingly he assumes that success for students depends on them getting grinds to supplement their class work, it must appear so from Mr McWilliams’ vantage point, let me point out that many students do not need grinds because they work well within the schools they attend and their parents don’t see the need to undermine the strong work done by their children’s teachers in schools which are under resourced, and under staffed. The idea that thousands of people are left terrorised by their education would be laughable if it did not try to discredit the work those same thousands have done to succeed in whatever way possible. We are used to hearing economists declaring unsupported ideas like half-cocked hunters firing blunderbusses skyward in the hope of felling a single bird, but the idea that there are ‘hundreds of thousands of brilliant Irish people walking around today who believe that they are not brilliant’ because of the education they received must rank up there with the bank guarantee as a half-baked theory.
‘How many exceptional people do you know who will say to you “I hated school”?’, he asks, who were ‘stigmatised’ by their education into believing in a ‘single-answer narrow, group-think’. My answer? How many people have been stigmatised by their banks, how many have been subjected to the groupthink of property speculation, and how many schools teach banking, property speculation and financial mismanagement?
The desire to blame education for having a punish/reward system that creates self-consciously insecure people or over-confident zombies would hilarious if it weren’t so awfully pass-remarkable. Teachers do not as Mr McWilliams states ‘drone on about the need for the education system to create a good educated workforce’, teachers ‘drone on’ about education, education, education. Sometimes even, education as an end in itself, imagine!. Rather it is the economists, the politicians, the business people who demand an education system that puts kids in perfect round holes so they can have their perfect drones for their money-making schemes. Education is the opposite of all that. Education sets children free, a point Mr McWilliams makes repeatedly about his own story, lucky to get a good education he was prepared to take the chances that came his way, and flourish. He would do better to think on the stories of those kids who won’t get those chances because they’re stuck in classes of 30+ in primary school, or who won’t get to read the subjects they love in secondary school because one cut or other or one ‘reform’ or other destroyed that chance. Sure the economy changes all the time like he says but so do schools, basing his opinion of schooling today on a conversation with his daughter about subject choice in first year and his own recollection of streaming in schools in the 1970s and 80s (a practice completely discredited 30 years later) is so wide of the mark that it invites one to wonder what would happen if we applied the economic thinking of the 1980s to our current mess, what would happen? Coalition implementing austerity then, coalition implementing austerity now: and it’s schools that foster group-think? And for the record any school that ‘implicitly or explicitly’ labels students as ‘stupid’ or encourages other students to think that way isn’t a place I’d like to work or send my children to be educated, in the 1980s when I went to school myself, or indeed ever.
It’s pretty desperate to see Mr McWilliams writing that he has no answer when his children find school unchallenging. Part of the job of schools is to encourage students to reach outside themselves, and if a parent isn’t on board with the school it makes the kid’s life far more difficult. The creativity he marvels at in children (they play computer games) is something good schools harness, but part of school too is taking the time to challenge ourselves to solve the problems we find more demanding and outside our ken.
In the end, Mr McWilliams’ criticisms boil down to a dislike of schooling back in the day. The problem of reform of the method of assessment today, as Junior Cycle reform proposes, is that it drives a wedge between teachers and students, it puts parents and teachers at odds over the way the students are rewarded and it insists that paperwork at local school level is more important than an external national certification programme.

 

Schools back then, and schools now

 
Junior Cycle reform deserves better coverage than quick off the mark dismissal of teachers and schools who fear changing assessment, not because it doesn’t work, but because for the vast, overwhelming majority of students, parents and teachers the current system does work and they weren’t consulted on the implications of the changes being pushed upon them. Just think, Irish people having decisions made for them, without their prior consultation or approval, that sounds like something only economists could do…

The McWilliams article http://is.gd/bKfFbj

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How I learn.

This post originally appeared here. (Thanks Hellie!)

I was never any good at memorising in school. It was the 80s and knowing your poetry, Irish and English, Maths theorems and French irregular verbs was expected of everyone. I couldn’t do it. Still can’t. I never ask students to learn things off by heart because I wasn’t able and a wise teacher once told be to never ask the kids to do something you aren’t able to do yourself.
So I read. I read everything I could get my hands on when I was in school, from Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators to EH Carr’s What is History? Constant reading, something I’m just realising we’re passing on to our elder (six year old) daughter is what set my learning apart: I devoured ideas, stories, explanations, movies (yes, you can read movies, cf. How to Read a Film, James Monaco), I assembled a library.

(http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/ww2_4/w45_10081158.jpg)
Going to university almost ruined that. We were encouraged to read very closely and I slowed down so much that I feel now I learned less for fear I’d miss something. That fear has been hanging over me since.
When I began to teach I changed style again and began to merge what I had read and understood myself with what my students taught me: patience, humour, how to stay young. Teachers are blessed to be in an environment where learning is always going on, and your learn two fold when you teach: you learn more about the topic and you learn how others best understand it.
Now I read more than ever. I read to learn best practice for my teaching (twitter is amazing for that), I read to learn what others are doing that works and I read to learn what might work in class; discovering a new story to teach an English class (The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is one I’ve recently rediscovered) or a new way to look at a historical event so students get a rounded view of the topic are always a treat.
My family used to say I became a teacher because I didn’t want to ever grow up and leave school. They were kind of right, but really it was because school and teaching are places I could learn all my life and pass on the knowledge.
I get to learn for a living. Not many people can say that.

(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m23ypiK2Ju1qaax88o1_500.jpg)

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Some questions on Junior Cycle reform

Some early questions that occur to me about the proposed changes to the Junior Certificate. Discussion welcome in the comments section.

There is an implication in the NCCA document that previous attempts at reform failed because they didn’t change the methods of assessment. Is the answer therefore that changing the method assessment is the only way of reforming the system effectively? Wouldn’t investment in education be as successful/effective as this choice which undermines the current, neutral system of examination?

Isn’t this change the result of an anxiousness to parse the PISA scores into a cataclysmic moments for Irish education, when really they merely compare different groups of teenagers in different countries?

The reforms will devolve power to schools to draw up programmes, particularly for short courses, themselves. Does this mean that a staff in situ over the next few years will have huge power? With staffrooms going through huge changes, and an increasingly casualised profession, when decisions are made about which subjects or short courses are to be adopted how easy will they be to undo? There is genuine fear that subjects like Geography and History will disappear because of staffing considerations, never to reappear.

The power to decide on programmes will, all or in part, devolve to management at a local level, thus managers will have huge power to drive the school in whatever curricular direction it wants, a power previously unheard of. Will this local autonomy provide the required insulation from bias in assessment, the necessary protection for minority subjects, and the desired confidence in the assesment process? Will the ‘localisation’ of this power pave the way for formal or informal comparisions of schools?

The NCCA framework presupposes learning can be measured. How can this be done without copious paperwork and pretend measuring criteria? We know each student moves at a different pace, but how do we measure this? These children will now be taught at a common level, so where do we allow for the gifted or the challenged?

The document seems to imply 1st Year will be a transition from Primary: when a students special needs hours, or access to an SNA, or indeed any psychological reports do not follow through, how much paperwork will be created in this ‘follow through’, and who will complete it?

On the 24 ‘Statements of Learning’. While the NCCA seems to suggesst these statements will be applied across the broad curriculum. When you know how a school works, it’s not hard to see these being used to justify one subject and reject another. How will it be possible to have a subject based curriculum while at the same time removing the clear division between subjects? The Minister is fond of falsely repeating that Primary teacher s teach children, Secondary teacher teach subjects: is the document proposing to water down subjects to help students, because it won’t.

How will the mix of subjects and short courses be timetabled? Has anyone in NCCA ever drawn up a timetable? Has anyone in the NCCA thought of the practicalities of implementation? Practicalities matter, wouldn’t it have been better to pilot the whole programme than introduce it in this way?

Key skills. There are many but two are elaborated on: literacy and numeracy. A member compared the way these have become ubiquitous to the way ‘gender studies’ was the compulsory unit of most CPD in the 1980s and 1990s. They bring us back to PISA, the peg on which the whole framework hangs.

Where is the evidence that ‘significant numbers disengage in 2nd Year’? What of those who remain commited and learning in the system as it stands?

On assessment: does the replacing of terminal exams with standarised tests really reduce the pressure on students to perform or the pressure on teachers to prepare students for tests? Doesn’t the proposed replacement of terminal exams replace year end pressure on everyone with constant pressure?

At present, the document says ‘both teachers and students focus on learning what is necessary to do well in final examinations’, isn’t this the fault of the examination rather than the students or the teachers? Doesn’t the dissolution of the importance of the SEC mean a lack of clarity and consistency in certification?

The document mentions constant feedback on assessment, what is envisaged here?

On CPD: when will it begin? How much of it will be provided? Will it be purely for planning or curriculum/course/content based? Even if proper CPD is rolled out, how much will these changes save on Inspection and the SEC?

On the choice of subjects: who will chose which subjects are to be taken for certification: the student, the teacher, the parent or management?

What is peer assessment? page 28

When will the final examination at the end of 3rd Year be taken and marked? Will teachers be marking a students Junior Cycle exam while still teaching, or is the month of June to be used?

Anyone who ever marked a state exam knows that they leave them marking conference with a feeling that the group of examiners are all on the same wavelength regarding the standard to be struck in the marking process: how is that to be achieved now?

How, if these proposals are accepted, will teachers be renumerated for marking work for certification? How will a local appeal system work?

Also it’s been pointed out to me that class contact time will fall by 1000 hours over the three years under this proposal, redundancies and redeployment will provide further savings. Is this what reform is to mean?

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What to do to support Irish NQTs

I’ve created a survey to find out what teachers think should be done if, as is widely expected, Newly Qualified Teachers will take the brunt of the next round of cuts introduced by the Irish government Please take a look, and if you’re a teacher, tell me what you’d like to see done.

It’ll be live for 3 days.

The poll is here

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One year on…

This blog is a year old today!
By coincidence I did this profile today to celebrate.

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