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
Annual Monitoring Report on Integration [esri.ie]
- Published: 03 May 2011
How are immigrants integrating into Irish society?
The Annual Monitoring Report on Integration, published today (4 May 2011) by The Integration Centre and the Economic and Social Research Institute , brings together a range of indicators to develop a profile of how immigrants are integrating into various aspects of Irish society: employment, education, social inclusion and active citizenship. Following a framework proposed at the EU Ministerial Conference on Integration at Zaragoza in 2010, the key indicators aim to be comparable across EU Member States, based on existing national data, and focused on outcomes. Immigrant equality in the workplace is also explored as a special theme in this Report using the National Workplace Survey. Other indicators draw primarily on surveys conducted by the CSO.
Key Findings
Employment
- Overall immigrants have been harder hit by the current recession than Irish nationals – with more job losses and a higher unemployment rate. At the start of 2010 their unemployment rate was 16% compared to less than 13% for Irish nationals. More recent data from the CSO shows that this gap grew over 2010.
- Among non-Irish nationals, unemployment is highest among New Member State (EU12) nationals, and lowest among old EU (EU13) nationals.
Education
- Comparing all adults, a higher proportion of non-Irish nationals have third level qualifications than Irish nationals, though this gap is much smaller among young people (25-34 year olds).
- PISA data from 2009 for 15 year olds show that while English-speaking immigrant students score as highly as Irish children, non-English-speaking students have much lower achievement scores in Maths and Reading.
Gaelscoil groups take issue with report [Examiner.ie]
- Published: 03 May 2011
Around 40,000 children attend 139 all-Irish primary schools, representing 6.5% of all 3,169 primary schools, in addition to the 106 Gaeltacht primary schools.
An Foras Pátrúnachta na Scoileanna Lán-Ghaeilge, which is patron to 58 non-Gaeltacht all-Irish schools, says the recommendation that parental surveys be used to identify the type of school to be built in areas of population growth will leave those seeking all-Irish education in the minority so the system is not likely to meet their needs.
Full Story: www.examiner.ie
Catholic schools’ extensions at risk [IrishExaminer]
- Published: 02 May 2011
CATHOLIC primary schools could have planned extensions delayed or cancelled if there is demand for other types of schools in an area, under policy recommendations to Education Minister Ruairi Quinn.
The proposal is contained in a major report on how to decide the patronage, language of instruction and other factors for new primary schools.
Its publication comes as the question of how Catholic schools in areas of settled population numbers might be transferred to a different patron to cater for parental demand by the recently-established Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector.
The Commission on School Accommodation (CSA) was asked in September 2008 by former minister Batt O’Keeffe to review the procedures and criteria for deciding on applications for new schools.
At the time, the focus was on how to cater for rising populations in Dublin and other larger urban areas.
Full Story: www.examiner.ie
Group calls for parental choice over school patrons [IrishTimes]
- Published: 02 May 2011
THE DEPARTMENT of Education should take all reasonable measures to ensure parents have a choice of school patron, according to a new report by an expert group.
The report on the procedures for establishing new primary schools says it is no longer practical for “every student to be provided with access to a place in a school operated by a patron of their choice”.
It says patrons must in future be able to show clear public demand for their proposed schools, possibly involving a parental survey.
Gaelscoileanna have raised concerns about this recommendation. In an appendix to the report, they say if schools are to be established on the basis of parental demand, it will be difficult to establish an all-Irish school, as only a minority of people will seek all-Irish education in preference to education through English.
The report of the Commission on School Accommodation comes as the Catholic Church, which controls 90 per cent of primary schools, prepares to hand over some schools to other patrons. Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has expressed the hope that 50 per cent of Catholic schools can be divested as part of the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism.
In their submission to the department’s review, Catholic Church groups say the criteria for recognising new schools “must respect the continuing demand for denominational education”.
The report says proposed new primary schools must signal readiness to be part of a development with other schools in order to gain recognition by the department.
Full Story: www.irishtimes.com
