Education is safeguarded by teachers not by politicians

It was one of those wickedly cold mornings we get in Monaghan, when I turned left at the cathedral to go to Dublin. 

There were teachers from the local VEC school, and, further out the road, more from the local Protestant school, on picket lines — striking about the proposed changes to the Junior Certificate examination.

They were standing in the cold, so the education of the children they teach would continue to be impartial and rewarded by effort and ability, and not by favouritism.