Delegates at the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) conference in Wexford have followed their Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) colleagues and voted to ballot on industrial action in the event of ongoing talks on Leaving Certificate reform failing to result in anticipated changes being paused.
A motion on the issue, debated on Wednesday as the Minister for Education Helen McEntee arrived to address the delegates, was overwhelmingly passed after the conference heard the changes would affect standards and equality.
A new round of talks aimed at resolving the dispute over the proposed reform started two weeks ago and is expected to conclude next month. The intention now is for a vote on industrial action, up to and including strike action, to go ahead if those talks fail.
“The facts are clear,” said TUI vice-president Anthony Quinn, who teaches in Co Monaghan, when proposing the motion on industrial action, “these reforms are being rushed through without adequate preparation time. The resources required have not been secured, the professional concerns of teachers have been consistently overlooked”.
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As the debate was in progress, Ms McEntee said the Government was providing additional funding to address concerns in relation to facilities such as labs and would also provide more training to teachers themselves.
“There’s been a lot done to date, money invested in our science labs and a huge amount of teacher training has already happened. But I am engaging with them now to see what more I can do to support them. We all know these changes are being brought in for the benefit of young people.”
Responding, the union’s president, David Waters, insisted the level of consultation to date had fallen “well short of what is required”, the current talks had so far yielded “very little” and teachers will press ahead with strike action if the concerns of their unions are not taken on-board.
He said substantially more resources would be needed for implementation, along with flexibility to the approach taken in relation to different subjects, and the anonymity of the Leaving Cert process was “a red line” for the union. His repeated references to the potential for strike action were well received by the conference.
In her address the Minster acknowledged AI is a concern in the context of any move away from exam-based assessment but insisted she would work “hand in hand” with teachers to ensure the process is a success.
Referencing the increasingly widespread use of AI by students, Mr Waters described recent guidance that its use should be permitted as long as it was acknowledged as “staggeringly naive”, suggesting that the system will inevitably be abused.
