Teachers’ action over junior cycle to continue

Teaching unions insist they will continue industrial action to achieve further changes to junior cycle reforms that have already been significantly moderated.

As thousands of teachers protested at school gates around the country, Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan repeated her call on the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) and Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) to return to talks.

The lunchtime protests aimed, without disrupting classes, to highlight opposition to changes the minister says she will implement. The plan set out by independent talks chairman Pauric Travers in February suggests that the Junior Certificate would be based solely on a final third-year exam, but that students would be assessed separately for in-school assessments by their own teachers.