Parents ‘do trust teachers to mark their Junior Cert pupils’

Parents trust teachers enough to mark their own students in the planned new-style Junior Certificate, a second-level parents’ leader has said.

The first changes will begin in English for students starting first year next autumn and who will finish the junior cycle in 2017. The replacement of State-certified exams with assessment by students’ own schools instead of paid examiners is causing unease among teacher unions, which say it will create pressures from parents and change the good relations they enjoy with students.

However, National Parents’ Council — Post-Primary chief Jim Moore said there is more respect for the teaching profession than those concerns suggest.