Schools to close on 24th November

force eleven

The union leaders still have their heads back in Celtic Tiger fantasy land. They still hanker for the 'benchmarking years', now sadly long gone, but still they'll fight till all the ammunition is spent.

Realism and fairness do not exist in this country anymore. Did they ever I wonder?

sonic.trip

The person on the six one news last night was Dave Thomas-Secretary General of the Association of Higher Civil and public servants, can be seen here at about 20-21 mins in.

Now look here and tell me if some of these LARGE salaries can not be reduced a bit. . . remembering they are 2008 rates

and he also said none of his members have lost their jobs that he is aware off.

LoLth

sits political mod hat on head for the first time:

A polite warning. Keep the argument focused on the topic at hand and refrain from personal abuse or insinuations please.

thank you very much

/takes mod hat off, head feels cold now..

OMD

ardmacha wrote: »

Nobody pretends that education is perfect, but neither has it caused the present problems nor has it caused public finance problems relative to other States since the total amount spent on it is not excessive.

That is exactly the point. The amount of money spent on education in this country is not excessive by any means when compared to other countries. Yet, the amount of money spent on teachers wages in this country is excessive by international standards. That means that the amount spent on the non-pay portion of education is tiny by international standards. Teachers, by their excessive pay demands have ensured that children suffer by poor facilities. This was disgraceful enough in the boom years, now with so much less money to go around the teachers are determined the students (and their families) will have to bear almost all the pain.

S.L.F

DanSolo wrote: »

Why are you deliberately skipping posts here?

anonymous_joe

force eleven wrote: »

The union leaders still have their heads back in Celtic Tiger fantasy land. They still hanker for the 'benchmarking years', now sadly long gone, but still they'll fight till all the ammunition is spent.

Realism and fairness do not exist in this country anymore. Did they ever I wonder?

In fairness nobody wants to take a cut. Unions are an inherent inefficiency, their purview is securing the most for teachers. It's not to help sustain our economy.

The blunt reality is that they get paid a lot of money, far more than their counterparts in other nations. How can that be justified? Why does an Irish teacher deserve more than a French, British or Dutch teacher?

Darragh29

force eleven wrote: »

The union leaders still have their heads back in Celtic Tiger fantasy land. They still hanker for the 'benchmarking years', now sadly long gone, but still they'll fight till all the ammunition is spent.

Realism and fairness do not exist in this country anymore. Did they ever I wonder?

It's a strange day when I find myself agreeing with Brian Cowen, but he was 200% correct this week when he said that the same logic that unions use to argue for compensation when the cost of living goes up, can be used to argue for a decrease in salary when the cost of living goes down.

S.L.F

herya wrote: »

Great achievement for the highest paid teachers indeed. 1st translated to 19th

Agreed not bad for a little country with only 4 million people

(even with crappy teachers:rolleyes:)

sonic.trip wrote: »

I'm glad you agree we are borrowing 400 million euro a week to pay these over paid, sub-standard teachers who will not take a pay cut to help the Irish economy get back on track in some way. . .

Wow!

I didn't know that the entire €400,000,000 was just to pay teachers.

Well you learn something new every day.

murphaph

anonymous_joe wrote: »

In fairness nobody wants to take a cut. Unions are an inherent inefficiency, their purview is securing the most for teachers. It's not to help sustain our economy.

The blunt reality is that they get paid a lot of money, far more than their counterparts in other nations. How can that be justified? Why does an Irish teacher deserve more than a French, British or Dutch teacher?

They'll say it's because the cost of living is higher, whilst ignoring the fact that the cost of living is falling fast and in fact, the only areas which have not seen falls are things run by the government, like healthcare!

S.L.F

anonymous_joe wrote: »

Why does an Irish teacher deserve more than a French, British or Dutch teacher?

Any teacher who gets a job here gets the same rate as an Irish teacher.

anonymous_joe

murphaph wrote: »

They'll say it's because the cost of living is higher, whilst ignoring the fact that the cost of living is falling fast and in fact, the only areas which have not seen falls are things run by the government, like healthcare!

Aye. Course they would. Sure they need the compensation for those long empty summers that get them so lonely and depressed.

S.L.F wrote: »

Any teacher who gets a job here gets the same rate as an Irish teacher.

Are you a teacher? If you're not, you might want to blame the ones in school for not teaching you to look at the context of a sentence when trying to figure out its meaning. Because I clearly meant in reference to those nations a teacher in employment in those nations, not a national of those said nations employed in Ireland.

Scofflaw

S.L.F wrote: »

Why does an Irish teacher deserve more than a French, British or Dutch teacher?

Any teacher who gets a job here gets the same rate as an Irish teacher.

Less of this kind of deliberate misunderstanding, please.

moderately,
Scofflaw

herya

S.L.F wrote: »

Agreed not bad for a little country with only 4 million people

And what's size got to do with it? Not to reach too far, top ten in science as quoted earlier consists of Finland, Estonia, Slovenia and New Zealand as much as of UK or China.

S.L.F

anonymous_joe wrote: »

Are you a teacher? If you're not, you might want to blame the ones in school for not teaching you to look at the context of a sentence when trying to figure out its meaning. Because I clearly meant in reference to those nations a teacher in employment in those nations, not a national of those said nations employed in Ireland.

Sorry Joe read it too fast.

I'm not a teacher but support their strike.

ardmacha

Why does an Irish teacher deserve more than a French, British or Dutch teacher?

Nobody is suggesting that Irish teacher salaries be increased to those of Dutch teachers. Are you?

Less of this kind of deliberate misunderstanding, please.

Can we also have a prohibition on deliberate lies like the quote below. Irish teachers do not enjoy the world's highest salaries. Now there is an argument to be made that salaries are too high, but lies should not be needed to sustain this.

to let teachers keep their world's highest salaries

OMD

S.L.F wrote: »

That's fantastic a real credit to our teachers a little auld country with 4 million people coming 19th in the world league.

I'm proud to be Irish.

Thank God we have great teachers.

Don't necessarily believe the figures. The report says

"A number of countries have relatively weak evaluation structures: one-third or more of lower secondary teachers are in schools in Portugal (33%), Austria (35%) and Ireland (39%) that had no form of school evaluation in the previous five years. "

DanSolo

sonic.trip wrote: »

Im not a homophobe or sexist, my best friend is gay. I assumed you were a woman.

Why are you guessing at my gender or sexual orientation at all? What are you trying to prove by that?

Scofflaw

DanSolo wrote: »

Why are you guessing at my gender or sexual orientation at all? What are you trying to prove by that?

Let it go, DanSolo. It's been explained, and the next poster to raise it will be banned. Don't take this kind of thing up on-thread - if you object, use the report function.

moderately,
Scofflaw

Ogham

OMD wrote: »

Don't necessarily believe the figures. The report says

"A number of countries have relatively weak evaluation structures: one-third or more of lower secondary teachers are in schools in Portugal (33%), Austria (35%) and Ireland (39%) that had no form of school evaluation in the previous five years. "

The quote you give above is evidence of the poor monitoring of teachers in Ireland - but it has nothing to do with the performance figures that I quoted earlier that show Ireland 19th in Science and 21st in Maths and 6th in reading.
Those "performance "figures were from the Programme for International Student Assessment PISA - hopefully teachers on here will have heard of it ?? (I am not a teacher just a concerned parent).
It involves standard tests on randomly selected children from all the countries involved. It would be interesting to know how many schools were involved and where they were. PISA say tests are typically administered to between 4,500 and 10,000 students in each country. (35 pupils from each selected school do the test). So at least 128 schools must have been involved. Anyone know anyone that was ever asked to do such a test?

sonic.trip

S.L.F wrote: »

Wow!

I didn't know that the entire €400,000,000 was just to pay teachers.

Well you learn something new every day.

Its not you smart arse but a large chunk goes towards paying waster teachers and their pensions + months of paid holidays, gardai and their overtime, senior civil servants and the rest of the countries elite wasters the government employs. . .

DanSolo

Scofflaw wrote: »

Let it go, DanSolo. It's been explained, and the next poster to raise it will be banned. Don't take this kind of thing up on-thread - if you object, use the report function.

moderately,
Scofflaw

Ah, a trollerator. No need for the bold type, I know when a forum's beyond saving.
Maybe your boyfriend is in the private sector?

sonic.trip

DanSolo wrote: »

Ah, a trollerator. No need for the bold type, I know when a forum's beyond saving.
Maybe your boyfriend is in the private sector?

now your the homophobe, why are sticking up for teachers if you are not one?

get with the programme again, we cannot sustain paying the world's highest paid teachers to the same level... DOES NOT COMPUTE, NO??

wake up and smell the coffee and get out of your shell

Scofflaw

sonic.trip and DanSolo banned for a week each. Try to contain your surprise.

moderately,
Scofflaw

irish_bob

Ogham wrote: »

Originally Posted by K-9 View Post
Any examples of countries with 77% of education expenditure on pay having good education systems?



It's not that good....

The recent OECD report on Ireland said the following about Education in Ireland

"the percentage of the entire education budget spent on teachers’ pay at primary, secondary and third level – some 75 per cent – is well above average among developed states."

It also comments on the myth of the excellent education system here...

"Ireland is close to international norms in terms of educational attainment for the resources committed. Overall, the education outcomes at secondary level are, it points out, good relative to the OECD average, but not as good as in the best performing countries. Performance in maths and science is, it says, below that of other high-income states."

Figures here show that in Science - Ireland came 19th - behind the Uk , Finland, NZ, China, Canada, holland, Slovenia, Germany,Estomia Belgium, Austria to name a few.

Apart from all these facts - the idea of any union calling a strike before any cuts have been announced is ridiculous.

not sure if its the same list but in a chart rundown of the best education systems , finland comes in 3rd , ireland does not even make the top 20 yet irish teachers earn 55% more than thier finnish counterparts

OMD

Ogham wrote: »

The quote you give above is evidence of the poor monitoring of teachers in Ireland - but it has nothing to do with the performance figures that I quoted earlier that show Ireland 19th in Science and 21st in Maths and 6th in reading.
?

19tt out of 58 for science does not sound too bad . Nothing to boast about. Ireland scored 508 with the average 500. So basically Ireland were just above average.

Ogham

OMD wrote: »

19tt out of 58 for science does not sound too bad . Nothing to boast about. Ireland scored 508 with the average 500. So basically Ireland were just above average.

Yes - it's not bad - but not great. That's what some of us are trying to say - the education system is not one of the best in the world - as our leaders would have us believe. The high pay of teachers has been defended (I think) by some pointing out the very good results they get - while the truth is that the results are as you say "just above average " .

I think teaching is a hard job - and an important one. This thread was about the proposed strike - which I still think is wrong before any cuts are even announced.

Dannyboy83

Scofflaw wrote: »

Try to contain your surprise.

moderately,
Scofflaw

LMAO:D:D

Scofflaw

Ogham wrote: »

Yes - it's not bad - but not great. That's what some of us are trying to say - the education system is not one of the best in the world - as our leaders would have us believe. The high pay of teachers has been defended (I think) by some pointing out the very good results they get - while the truth is that the results are as you say "just above average " .

I think teaching is a hard job - and an important one. This thread was about the proposed strike - which I still think is wrong before any cuts are even announced.

Personally, I don't even think it's a question of whether teachers deserve their pay or not - if the money was there, that would be a reasonable discussion. The money isn't there, so it's not really relevant unless it's a question of whether teachers are more deserving than other people in the public service to whom the cuts might be deflected.

cordially,
Scofflaw

rebel10

K-9 wrote: »

I suppose you could argue over how has the decrease in the pupil teacher ratio benefited our system, but we'd probably be here all night. Personally, I think the increase in SNA's was more beneficial as that section was largely ignored.

Funny, cause people sharing their views on this thread believe students with Sna's are the "dumbed down" individuals in our school. Personally, as someone who is qualified, i believe it is beneficial, but do you know the rate of pay given to a SNA?

irish_bob

Ogham wrote: »

Yes - it's not bad - but not great. That's what some of us are trying to say - the education system is not one of the best in the world - as our leaders would have us believe. The high pay of teachers has been defended (I think) by some pointing out the very good results they get - while the truth is that the results are as you say "just above average " .

I think teaching is a hard job - and an important one. This thread was about the proposed strike - which I still think is wrong before any cuts are even announced.

i often think the widespread belief that we have a world class education system in this country has about as much merit as the widespread belief that everyone loves us abroad just because were irish