Goodbye junior cert.

judeboy101

political analyst wrote: »

The Department has agreed that there won't be non-standardised state assessment. If the ASTI had accepted the new Junior Cycle assessment system and the Department had then broken its word, then all the ASTI would have to do is ballot again for industrial action on the issue of the assessment system.

The dept agreed to give back the s&s money if the Asti did HR. Fool me once.....

political analyst

judeboy101 wrote: »

The dept agreed to give back the s&s money if the Asti did HR. Fool me once.....

Fair enough. Point taken.

political analyst

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/asti-teachers-defy-own-ban-on-assessing-their-students-1.2790101

According to this article, written by Brian Mooney and published on 14 September, Junior Cert results indicate that there is a significant number of ASTI members defying a prohibition by their union on engaging in assessing their own students in oral Irish.

Here's the most interesting part of the article:

The difficulties for the ASTI in securing compliance with directives has been compounded in recent weeks by the decision of a significant number of non-union or former ASTI teachers in voluntary secondary schools to transfer to membership of the TUI.


The TUI does not recruit in such schools, and cannot represent these teachers at national collective bargaining, although all such bargaining takes place on a collective union basis anyway.


The TUI can represent these new members at local level in dealing with issues arising in their schools.
The union has not confirmed the numbers involved but has indicated that it has experienced a spike in new members in recent weeks.

I didn't know that it was possible for teachers in voluntary secondary schools to join the TUI.

doc_17

political analyst wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/asti-teachers-defy-own-ban-on-assessing-their-students-1.2790101

According to this article, written by Brian Mooney and published on 14 September, Junior Cert results indicate that there is a significant number of ASTI members defying a prohibition by their union on engaging in assessing their own students in oral Irish.

Here's the most interesting part of the article:



I didn't know that it was possible for teachers in voluntary secondary schools to join the TUI.

It's not as far as I know.

judeboy101

You

doc_17 wrote: »

It's not as far as I know.

You can. In my school we got two redeployments, both tui and two others in the school joined tui last year. So we have 4tui and 72asti on staff.

political analyst

judeboy101 wrote: »

Devolving funding means devolving responsibility. Funding was devolved to hospital groups and now they get fined and have to make cuts if they don't make targets. And we don't have a good record of treating whistle blowers.

The fact that this is public knowledge means that lessons have been learned. Furthermore, teachers would never throw one of their own under a bus, so to speak.

political analyst

judeboy101 wrote: »

The dept agreed to give back the s&s money if the Asti did HR. Fool me once.....

There's a world of difference between breaking a promise on restoration of money to teachers and breaking a promise on change to the State exam system. The latter would antagonise parents as well as teachers and would thus be political suicide.

evolving_doors

political analyst wrote: »

The fact that this is public knowledge means that lessons have been learned. Furthermore, teachers would never throw one of their own under a bus, so to speak.

Never???? Well, hardly ever...

political analyst

Gebgbegb wrote: »

Never???? Well, hardly ever...

The teachers' unions take loyalty seriously. The principal of a secondary school (I'm not saying which type of secondary school) in the south-east was kicked out of the union just over a decade ago for disloyalty to colleagues (You can probably guess which one I'm talking about).

political analyst

So what if the changes to the Junior Cycle exam system mean that the Junior Cert is being essentially down-graded?

The fact that over 90% of secondary students who do the Junior Cert go on to do the Leaving Cert (not to mention the fact that the minimum school-leaving age will be raised in the future) means that Junior Cert in its present format is redundant because most employers regard it with no importance.

jonseyblub

political analyst wrote: »

So what if the changes to the Junior Cycle exam system mean that the Junior Cert is being essentially down-graded?

The fact that over 90% of secondary students who do the Junior Cert go on to do the Leaving Cert (not to mention the fact that the minimum school-leaving age will be raised in the future) means that Junior Cert in its present format is redundant because most employers regard it with no importance.

I teach chemistry and I generally find that kids who have done honours science in junior cert cope much better with it than kids who haven't. If there is a dumbing down of the standards to allow for common papers in JC these kids who always coped may now struggle at Leaving Cert.
I'm sure the same can be said for most subjects.

coillsaille

jonseyblub wrote: »

I teach chemistry and I generally find that kids who have done honours science in junior cert cope much better with it than kids who haven't. If there is a dumbing down of the standards to allow for common papers in JC these kids who always coped may now struggle at Leaving Cert.
I'm sure the same can be said for most subjects.

Very true. In fact there is already quite a difference in the level of difficulty between higher level JC and higher level LC in some subjects (e.g geography, history, and the languages).
Even the students who do higher level JC in these subjects find the higher level LC course quite challenging but they're able to cope with it. If higher level JC is replaced by common level they won't be able to cope with it. So then the next logical step (in the DES's logic that is) will be to start dumbing down the Leaving Cert.