Here’s an interesting thing. Second level students who understand what the strike next week is about, largely support their teachers. In contrast, most of the general public have no idea why teachers are striking. (Declaration of interest – I am a second-level teacher.)
Students who are in the system understand that their teachers assess them every day, and do so more formally in Christmas and summer exams. They see many of their teachers are using ICT (where resources allow) and that collaborative learning in pairs and groups has become much more common.
Huge changes have already taken place, with Project Maths being only one example of reforms implemented already.
So students know that the strike is not about assessing pupils, or resisting change. In fact, many students know that a great way to get teachers off topic for a couple of minutes is to get them moaning about the current system’s limitations.
Students understand that the key question is whether teachers should be the final judges of 40 per cent of the work they will do for State certification. Just like their teachers, they think that is a really bad idea. Yes, they trust their teachers – they just think that the system will be more fair if it is fully certified and supervised by external authorities. When parents understand the issue, they, too, are far happier with the idea of an independent, fair, objective external standard.
State concessions
It is true that the State has made some concessions. Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan agreed that reducing the Junior Cert to the status of an inhouse exam would damage education, so decided to retain State certification for 60 per cent of the exam, but to say that saving money was not a factor is simply not true. In higher level English in the current Junior Cert, there are two papers to be supervised and corrected. The new exam only has one.
This year, more than 91,100 higher English papers were set to be supervised and corrected, while there will only be approximately 45,600 under the new system.
It is also not true that teachers have made no concessions. In fact, teachers have driven much of the reform. Teachers support essays, assignments, portfolios and practical work as part of a move away from too much focus on a final exam.
Mind you, they are quietly seething that a new Junior Cycle was introduced without proper consultation with the people who will be responsible for implementing it.
For example, if the Department of Education was serious about teachers assessing their own pupils, there would have been extensive inservice training in moderation.
According to the official Junior Cycle website, “moderation is a collaborative process that enables teachers to reach consistency in their judgments of student work against agreed features of quality”.
It is not something that you become skilled in overnight. The fact that a new curriculum was introduced to first years in English this year, with virtually no preparation for moderation, shows how little this is about reform.
The pilot schools have done Trojan work, with very little in terms of extra resources or support. But there have been few opportunities to share best practice with other schools.
To be brutally frank, the way this so-called reform has been introduced has been little short of disastrous. Even the most elementary understanding of change management would suggest that the best time to introduce far-reaching reforms is not straight after far-reaching cuts.
Take the issue of guidance counsellors. For many reasons, there has been a rise in emotional distress among teens in recent times, but the response was to slash spending on counselling within schools.
This has practical and immediate knock-on effects on pupils. Take a teenager who has been bereaved and who desperately needs to take time out from class. Subject teachers cannot abandon 29 other pupils to sit with someone who needs a listening ear, much as they would like to.
The principal’s office might be an option, but the cuts in posts such as year heads have left principals and deputy principals desperately overworked, often dealing with a dozen issues at once.
Overworked counsellors
In times past, the guidance counsellor, although overworked as well, could probably have cleared the decks and seen the bereaved student. In many schools, that is no longer an option, so people race around, trying to cobble together help for a student who just needs a trained listening ear for 40 minutes.
The State is blustering about a more holistic vision of education, yet what the cuts have done is attack all the areas of education where holistic care is being given.
And what about the casualisation of the profession? The idea of being permanent and pensionable is laughable to most young teachers. Again, it is expected that young teachers will implement a holistic form of education, when they themselves are being treated by the Department of Education with a cynicism bordering on contempt.
The solution is clear. Keep external assessment and get on with the real task – developing an education system driven by educational needs and not cost-cutting.