JC reforms to go ahead despite fears

Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan insists junior cycle reforms will go ahead as she prepares to re-enter talks with teacher unions over opposition to marking their own pupils.

At a conference of school leaders in Galway, she was asked what principals could tell parents of first-year students who ask what is happening with assessment of the English course being taught for the first time this term.

It is the first subject in which a new course has been brought in. Teachers will be expected to mark their own students on coursework in late 2016, and eventually in the final written exams, although not for the first few years in English, maths, or Irish.