ASTI - Ireland's main second level teachers union

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Ambitious plans to overhaul the Junior Cycle should be put on hold until the worst of the education cuts are reversed, according to the ASTI.

Following a meeting of the ASTI Standing Committee last week, ASTI General Secretary Pat King has written to the Minister for Education and Skills Ruairi Quinn urging him to “pause” his plans to proceed with Junior Cycle reform.

“The Minister himself has stated that effective educational reform can only be implemented at a pace which the system can sustain,” said the ASTI’s Pat King. “What teachers are saying is that after more than three years of education cuts, the second-level education system has been weakened to the extent that the significant reform contained in the Junior Cycle reform proposals is currently unfeasible.”

Second-level schools engage in continuous educational reform, said Mr King. For example, the implementation of the National Strategy to Improve Literacy and Numeracy (2011-2020) will be rolled out in the coming months and will impact on all areas of the school curriculum. This initiative includes the revision of syllabi, the introduction of new teaching and learning techniques in the classroom, and teachers administering and collating new standardised assessment tests for all students on a regular basis. These and other reforms are being implemented in an environment which is being further drained of resources including personnel and funding.

Prior to Budget 2012 the ASTI expressed its concerns to the Minister regarding the Junior Cycle reform proposals including the lack of detail about what the reform proposals would mean for schools and how they would be implemented. Concern amongst teachers over Junior Cycle reform has increased following the Budget 2012 announcements that 700 second-level teaching posts are to go in 2012, that teacher numbers are to be cut again in 2013, and that funding for schools is to be cut by 6% over the next four years.

“Teachers are eager to contribute to reform which is educationally sound and which improves their students’ experience of education,” said Pat King. “However, for something as important as the Junior Cycle and which involves a State exam, it is vital that the reform works and that it is not just change for the sake of change. To implement such complex and significant reform at a time when all second-level schools are overstretched and many are near breaking point would be damaging for students, schools and the second-level education service.”

“The most effective next step the Minister can take towards meaningful educational reform is to begin to undo the most savage of the education cuts.”