An insider’s guide to education
The money madness of the orals
It sounds too good to be true, but,unfortunately for taxpayers, it’s a feature of our education system. We are talking about the bizarre arrangements for the Junior and Leaving Cert oral exams, which continue in schools this week.
Here’s what happens. A language teacher in school A conducts the orals, not at his or her own school but at school B, several kilometres away. The teacher is paid up to €37 per hour for the orals in school B – and is paid as normal for the day job back at school A.
Meanwhile, back at school A, a substitute teacher is employed, at considerable expense to the taxpayer, to cover for the teacher who has opted to take the orals at school B.
Most examiners pick up about €1,000 extra for two weeks of orals. Nice work if you can get it. This system, where the taxpayer is paying on the double, continues because the oral exams take place during term, despite the very generous holidays provided to second-level teachers. The whole daft system underlines how the education system remains in the grip of the teacher unions.
Will the Department of Education or the State Exams Commission address the issue? Don’t bet on it.
The unloved council
Who loves the Teaching Council, the regulatory body for teachers? Erm, not very many. The council appears to be unloved among teachers. That was one of the conclusions from a report drawn up by John O’Dowd, former general secretary of the CPSU and former assistant general secretary of the ASTI.
“I was quite shocked at the negativity that people expressed towards the Teaching Council,” he said. “In all organisations, across the board, people were highly critical of various aspects of the Teaching Council.”
The council has hardly helped itself with all that negative publicity about the generous pay, pension and expenses arrangements for some senior staff and board members.
Teachers resent the extravagant spending habits of the group, which collects a €90 registration fee from 70,000 teachers every year.
The good news? From next year the fee will be reduced to €65, an acknowledgment that the current fee is much too high.
But the Teaching Council still needs to build bridges with ordinary teachers in staffrooms across the country.
Two UCC dropouts get chatting
The actor Cillian Murphy was on the Saturday-morning show that Graham Norton (right) presents on BBC Radio 2 last week to promote Enda Walsh’s Misterman, which is running at the National Theatre in London.
The two got to reminiscing about their time at University College Cork. Both dropped out.
“My mother was very cross about me dropping out,” said Norton. “But I said, you could just lie. No one’s going to check. Now if you said you got a first from Cambridge, well, someone’s going to check that. But if you said you got a BA Hons from UCC you’d get a” – cue Norton’s most uninterested voice – “did you?”
The cheeky devil.
The chat then turned to the Irish language, with Murphy explaining that in the US they tend to pronounce his name with a “soft C”, because there it’s usually spelled with a K. His name, he said, is spelled with a C because there’s no K in the Irish language.
“Really?” said Norton, sounding genuinely amazed. “I learned Irish from four to 18 and I never knew that.”
Not that it’s held him back or anything.
Quinn’s full term?
Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn got a good reception from the Labour grassroots at the recent party conference.
Yes, there was plenty of criticism about that U-turn on student fees. But most Labour supporters see Quinn as a reforming Minister who is making a difference.
That said, the Deis fiasco, where Quinn was accused of targeting disadvantaged schools, still rankled with some delegates. That was a huge mistake, but I can’t see making another – he has learned his lesson, said one delegate.
As they sipped their lattes at NUI Galway the big talking point was Quinn’s stated desire to remain in education for a full term.
The assumption had been that Quinn would vacate Marlborough Street next summer, during the midterm reshuffle.
Several ambitious Labour junior ministers, including Róisín Shortall, would love to step into the breach. And some Labour backbenchers were also eyeing the vacancy.
With a crowded reform agenda, it makes sense for Quinn to remain in education until the next election, due in 2016.
Remarkably, he is the sixth education Minister in the past decade, after Michael Woods, Noel Dempsey, Mary Hanafin, Batt O’Keeffe and Mary Coughlan.
As Quinn acknowledges, education reform is a slow burner, so it makes sense to leave someone in situ for the long haul.
Much will depend on the Labour leadership. Are they happy for Quinn to remain even though he’s not contesting the next election or will they press for a younger replacement?
Bring on the Ballygowan
The secret to a good degree? A bottle of water. A study presented at the British Psychological Society conference last week found that those who brought drinks with them into the hall averaged 5 per cent better in exams. Apparently, those who sipped drinks, especially water, as they sat their exams performed up to 10 per cent better than those who did not.
