Unions to decide on further talks over junior cycle plans

Teacher union leaders will decide on Friday whether to proceed with talks on disputed aspects of junior cycle reforms, after a second full day of discussions with the Department of Education again failed to produce any agreement.

The negotiations between department officials and the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) and Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) broke up after 11pm on Monday.

With little or no progress on the disputed question of who should mark students’ work for a revised Junior Certificate, it had been proposed by the department that talks chairman Pauric Travers draw up proposals based on his understanding of each side’s position.

The department requested that Mr Travers come up with a proposal he believed would be a fair and equitable basis for progress, based on two full days of discussions, on Monday and last Thursday.

However, some union leaders felt this idea went beyond the scope of the initial talks and the role of Mr Travers in the talks. As a result, any decision to proceed on the basis proposed by the department must be put to the wider leaderships of the two unions.

“The union side have stated that they will bring this suggested course of action to their representative executives for consideration on Friday,” said a statement, issued late on Monday night from both sides.

The 23-member standing committee of the ASTI will meet on Friday while TUI’s executive will discuss the idea at a scheduled meeting on the same day.

The agreed statement from unions and the department said that Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan has indicated her willingness to consider any proposal from Mr Travers. If this plan were to be approved by the unions, talks might resume early next week.

However, any final deal that might emerge could require a full ballot of the 27,000 second-level members of both unions before the threat of a third one-day strike at 720 schools is lifted.

The unions have already forced the closure of schools attended by about 340,000 students twice, in December and again two weeks ago. Members have not taken part in training or meetings related to junior cycle reform since last April.

Mr Travers, ex-president of St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, has acted as an independent chair of various rounds of talks since November. The first stage ended promptly, with unions not engaging on the offer which the minister put forward to scrap the previous proposal that teachers mark their own students’ final written Junior Certificate exams.

Ms O’Sullivan still wants them to assess two pieces of coursework, one each in second and third year, that would be worth up to 40% of total marks in each subject. Unions say members oppose such school-based assessment, claiming it would affect student-teacher relations and leave the marking system open to question.