Teacher's Pet [IrishTimes]
- Published: 03 May 2011
After that gruelling round of three teacher conferences in three days, Ruairi Quinn took the train to Dublin from Tralee on Wednesday night. He was back in his office early last Thursday morning, ready for the next phase of his reform agenda.
Quinn can count his first tour of the Easter conferences as a major success. Despite his grim message about cutbacks and austerity, he still managed to draw a warm response from over 1,500 delegates; no mean achievement given the cutback culture in education.
Quinn will have been encouraged by the apparent willingness of the two second-level unions to co-operate with his plans to overhaul the Junior Cert exam. The leaderships of both unions know there is no percentage in being seen to oppose change – especially after those dismal OECD results exposed a crisis in Irish literacy and numeracy standards.
The Minister’s challenge now is to assess just how far he should go with exam reform. Should he push for a radical package involving more continuous assessment, oral exams in all language subjects and new measures to boost science – or should he just tinker around the edges?
Our guess is that Quinn is ready to be very radical. But will the rank-and-file in the teacher unions be willing to assess their own students in a new continuous-assessment environment? And how can the recast exam enjoy the same level of public confidence as the Junior Cert? These and other questions must be teased out by Quinn and his band of officials over the next month.
Full Story: www.irishtimes.com
