Sir, - In an article headed "ASTI meets to consider submission to benchmarking pay review" (December 7th), your Education Editor writes: "Its former President, Ms Bernadine O'Sullivan, said benchmarking would lead to industrialisation of education." As I am no longer a member of the ASTI Standing Committee, I am somewhat surprised that I was quoted on this matter rather than the ASTI general secretary.
In a poster distributed to every school in the country the General Secretary has stated: "The benchmarking process does not provide a mechanism through which the unique activity of teaching can be adequately rewarded. Benchmarking assumes that relationships between groups in the private and public sectors can be established that are fair and comparable. The kind of quantification and atomisation of work activities characteristic of benchmarking models cannot do appropriate justice to the work of a teacher."
The ASTI Standing Committee, Central Executive Committee, Annual Convention and a Ballot of members established and reiterated our policy on benchmarking. It is the duty of all elected members and paid officials to promote and uphold our policies. However, a feature of our pay campaign was the labelling of those who support and promoted the policies, and the majority decisions, of our association as "hard-liners", "militants" and as "belonging to a faction".
Excellent articles by Kevin Lewis, an ASTI member and Career Guidance Counsellor, and Paddy Healy, a member of the Governing Body of DIT, on the educational, professional and pension implications of benchmarking, detail a host of disadvantages which education in Ireland would suffer in a benchmarking regime. The Irish Times is to be congratulated for publishing these informative articles.
From the reports on the discussions on benchmarking with the other two teacher unions, it would appear that the issue of the Junior Cert no longer being a nationally certified examination is once again back on the agenda.
In this context the recent OECD report on the Irish education system is very timely. Has it occurred to the Department of Education that the outstanding success of our education system, achieved on a shoe-string budget, might have anything to do with the fact that we are one of the two countries that still has two nationally certified examinations at second level?
The Junior Cert is a powerful motivator for students, teachers and parents. How shortsighted it would be to dismantle something which has clear benefits for pupils. To justify this by associating it with the creation of a regime in which pupils would lose out, and in which the relationship between pupils and teachers would be permanently undermined to the detriment of both groups, would be unforgivable. - Yours, etc.,
Bernadine O'Sullivan, Fortfield Road, Dublin 6W.