Junior Cycle for Teachers (JCT), RTÉ and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) have launched three online classroom resources related to the Junior Cycle classroom.

Junior Certificate students will no longer be asked in exams to prove Pythagoras’ or anybody else’s theorems under a revised junior cycle maths course.

Extra staff to design and deliver teacher training for the revised junior cycle are being recruited before unions vote on whether to adopt the changes.

Any training of teachers for new assessments of Junior Cycle students from next spring will not be able to start until at least mid-October as unions have yet to ballot members on the plans.

Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan is disturbed by the idea of teachers blocking colleagues from upskilling themselves as the impasse on junior cycle reform shows no sign of lifting.

Further strikes or mass demonstrations at the Department of Education could be staged in the next school year if the junior cycle row remains un-resolved, a union leader has warned.

New assessment methods for junior cert students are to be covered in training which Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan plans to take place next month despite an ongoing union ban on 27,000 teachers attending.

Up to 6,000 special needs assistants represented by the Impact trade union have balloted in favour of industrial action up to strike, over what Impact says is a reduction in working hours and fragmentation of SNA posts.

A request by teacher unions to have training on the new junior cycle suspended has been rejected by Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan.

Around 700 teachers will have been trained this term for changes to the Junior Certificate despite ongoing industrial action by two unions over the reforms.

The Department of Education could spend €1m in the next year on designing training that teachers are refusing to attend, in an industrial dispute over junior cycle reform.