‘Change due’ in oral Irish marking

The head of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) expects changes soon to a policy that allows members mark their own students in a Junior Certificate exam after this week’s strike over school-based assessment for State exams.

The numbers taking an optional spoken-Irish exam has jumped in recent years but the State Examinations Commission (SEC) does not pay for examiners to visit schools like it does for Leaving Certificate orals. Instead, it allows schools to organise them and send the marks on for addition by the SEC to results from written and listening exams in June.

The main reason behind the TUI and Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) strike that kept 340,000 students at home from school on Tuesday was their opposition to a requirement that teachers mark their own students.