A disused telephone box is being offered to science teachers in one school to store chemicals, equipment and students’ work to facilitate the introduction of laboratory-based projects under Leaving Cert reforms, a teachers’ conference has heard.
An underutilised porch was being allocated to teachers in another school to boost their storage space, the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) gathering in Wexford was told on Wednesday.
Delegates passed a motion calling on Minister for Education Hildegarde Naughton to pause, on health and safety grounds, the introduction of laboratory-based additional assessment component research investigations, which are worth up to 40 per cent of final marks as part of reforms to Leaving Cert biology, chemistry and physics.
However, delegates rejected separate proposals that the union should direct its members not to proceed with the implementation of any changes where teachers believed they could give rise to health and safety concerns. ASTI general secretary Kieran Christie said such a move would be seen by the Department of Education as a form of industrial action.
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Siobhán O’Donovan, of the union’s Desmond branch, said 89 per cent of schools did not have adequate or safe facilities to store students’ ongoing experiments or materials needed as part of the reforms.
“This is not a minor inconvenience, it is a serious safety concern,” she said. “Without proper storage, chemicals, equipment and student work will be left unsecured, increasing the risk of accidents or misuse.
“In schools all over the country, at present, old pokey offices and dusty storage rooms, if they even exist, are being cleaned out in the exasperated hope that they may provide some limited storage space for the science teachers.
“In one school I know, an underutilised porch is being offered to the science teachers as a way of providing some storage.”
She said in the school with the old telephone box, a lock and a key had been given to teachers so they could use it.
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Adrienne Healy, of the ASTI Dublin North West branch, said as trade unionists they could not stand over a situation where teachers were being asked to supervise high-stakes laboratory-based investigations without proper training, resources or facilities.
She said an independent report, commissioned by science teachers and carried out by Prof Mike Watts of Brunel University in London, had recommended, based on evidence provided by 350 schools, that the proposed laboratory-based research investigations be paused immediately on health and safety grounds.
“The report states that 70 per cent of teachers do not feel qualified to perform risk assessments for the additional assessment component investigations. Risk assessment is not optional. It is fundamental,” she said.
“If seven out of 10 teachers do not feel qualified to carry out those risk assessments, then this model is not safe to proceed.”
