Teachers should pause and rethink strike action - Joan Burton

Tánaiste Joan Burton has called on the teachers' unions to "pause and think again" about their industrial action over reform of the Junior Certificate.

During heated exchanges in the Dáil, Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald accused Tánaiste Joan Burton of a “stubborn refusal to listen to teachers”.

But Ms Burton claimed Ms McDonald was “like St Augustine - Lord make me reform, but not just yet”.

The 27,000 secondary school teachers went on a second day’s strike today over the reform, which would involve them assessing 40 per cent of students’ work, while the State exam process would account for the remaining 60 per cent at Junior Cert level.

During leaders’ questions in the Dáil, Ms Burton said “the teaching’ unions need to engage in discussions”.

She said: “The teaching unions need to pause and think again about what is best for our precious children.”

‘Critical reforms’

Giving children the best education that could possibly be provided involved “critical reforms” in the classroom, including collaboration and work both by the individual and by class groups “that actually allows children to be creative and to be participants and leading in their own learning process”.

The Labour leader said she had worked as a senior lecturer for a number of years in DIT in Dublin and she set her own exams, marked her own exams and took part in the examination structures of a number of accounting bodies.

Ms McDonald said comparisons could not be made between a third level institution with students from all over the country and beyond and “perhaps a school in a rural or urban area where teachers live in the community, where relationships are very strong. It’s a very different dynamic.”

She also warned of “the very real prospect of a third day of industrial action” and said the situation ran the “very serious risk of damaging the credibility of the State examination and qualification itself”.

Ms McDonald claimed the situation “is testament to your Government’s failure to engage constructively and positively with teachers on the issue of Junior cycle reform”.

Continuous assessment

She said there was a consensus that reform needed to happen and a need to adopt a model of continuous assessment. “But the disagreement revolves around your Government’s insistence that teachers should mark and grade their own students.”

She accused the Government of being “unreasonable” and asked why it would not “heed the concerns and insights of the teaching profession”.

In a jibe at the Sinn Féin deputy leader, Ms Burton said: “I go into very well-off schools, fee-paying schools, you’d be familiar with those,” in apparent reference to Ms McDonald’s own education.

She said well-off schools operated in a very collaborative fashion, while students in poorer areas left school because the curriculum did not meet their needs.