Ballot possible on quitting Croke deal

Secondary teachers will ballot on walking away from the Croke Park Agreement if the Government attempts to cut allowances, the Association of Secondary Teachers was told.

ASTI president Brendan Broderick said that if the Government implemented such cuts the union would ballot members “on withdrawal from the public service agreement… and those who broke the agreement can take full responsibility for the consequences”.

At the annual conference in Cork, he attacked the Government for slashing expenditure and described plans to cut schools’ allocation of guidance counsellors as “the most significant cut” of last year’s budget. He said it was “directed at adolescent students at a time in their lives when they are most vulnerable”.

“As well as giving professional guidance on career and subject choice, the guidance counsellor is often the only access a young person has for problems ranging from mental health issues, bullying…. to issues arising from their home environment, etc,” he said.

He said “the curtailment of this service at post-primary will surely lead to an increase in early school dropout rates and young people getting into trouble with the law”.

“Minister, it costs a lot more to keep a person in jail for a year than to maintain this vital service in a school: and the stark reality is that 90% of prisoners are early school-leavers,” he said.

He also vocalised the concerns that teachers have with the revised framework for the junior cycle, in particular unease with teachers assessing their own students in exams.

“Teaching, learning, and assessment are all culture-bound activities and whether we like to admit it or not, the Irish cultural tradition is clientist rather than rules-based,” he said.

“Therefore, moving to any system of school-based assessment by teachers of their own students for certification purposes, will undermine the credibility, status and integrity of the exam system.

“Pressure from parents directly or indirectly through school management: or pressure emanating from competition between local schools for students could also lead to the distortion of results.”

Furthermore, he said that “teachers don’t believe that the necessary resources will be provided to successfully introduce the proposed new junior cycle reform” and that they were concerned at the proposed limit on the number of subjects to be taken by students in their Junior Certificate exams.