Letters to the Editor: Teachers should reject proposed changes to the senior cycle
A reader's long list of reasons for rejecting the proposed changes include the 'flawed reform' of AACcs (additional assessment components), the use of AI (artificial intelligence), and 'forced declarations of union membership'. Picture: iStockÂ
As a teacher who entered the profession in 2013, I have spent my career watching unions trade the long-term professional standing of their members for “easy” wins that offer little substance.
We are now being asked to accept the updated senior cycle redevelopment implementation support measures and its latest addendum. Before accepting these measures, teachers must look at the reality of what is being offered.
The reformatting of 14 hours is not a reduction in our crushing workload; it is merely a rebalancing of existing Croke Park hours from whole-school to teacher-led activities. This is effectively being told we can have a fragment of our own unpaid time back, provided we use it to implement the department’s flawed reform.
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Despite this, there is no mention of increased non-class contact professional time — a resource that 70% of teachers have identified as a necessity to manage the 40% additional assessment components [AACs] and was unanimously sought in a convention motion.
Recent studies highlight a profession at a breaking point, with 69% of teachers reporting they have considered leaving the job.
Teachers describe the current workload trajectory as “unsustainable” and “overwhelming”, leading to widespread burnout and a collapse in morale. The department’s response to this retention crisis is to layer on more administrative and supervision duties without any meaningful relief in teaching hours.
The support for science departments is equally hollow. The offer of laboratory support is restricted to an “action research pilot project”, with no guarantee of a national rollout.Â
Meanwhile, the €2m implementation grant, when divided among over 700 schools, leaves each with roughly €2,800 — a sum the department knows is insufficient to build even a bike shed, let alone equip a modern laboratory where specialist equipment for a single subject can cost up to €7,000.
Furthermore, we are being directed toward health and safety training from Oide rather than the Health and Safety Authority.
The department’s own addendum admits to changing the feedback mechanism for this training because the previous provision was so poor in the eyes of teachers.
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While they promise “legal protection” for authentication, the specific word “indemnity” is missing. When the inevitable accident happens in an overcrowded lab during an unpiloted assessment, it is the teacher who will be left to justify if they acted “reasonably”.
Our students are already voting with their feet and avoiding subjects with AACs due to the stress of multiple overlapping deadlines and the impossibility of authenticating work in the age of generative AI.
We see the department withholding assistant principal posts via forced declarations of union membership as a way to victimise ASTI members for standing up for their rights, an unprecedented and dangerous move in industrial relations.
As someone whose pension is not at parity with pre-2011 peers, I have seen enough “settlements” that leave us worse off. We must call their bluff.Â
The Government claimed there was no money for farmers or hauliers before suddenly finding €505m euro.
The money is there; the respect for our profession is not.
I encourage all teachers to reject this addendum and demand the professional time, laboratory technicians, and legal indemnity we actually need.
I am horrified. (“Bessborough: 1926 census reveals scale of child deaths and missing records in Cork”, April 25). I have read many books by victims of mother and baby homes.
I just cannot take in the level of sadism, cruelty, and torture these so-called nuns did daily to young girls and innocent children.
I lay the blame at the Catholic religion, and its sick doctrine of original sin and limbo. These inhuman monsters they called “nuns” were demons in disguise. I mean, over 700 children died under one of the orders? If that’s not satanic, I don’t know what is.
I was brought up Catholic like almost everyone in this godforsaken country, and I lived for a time as a religious in a monastery so I know what I’m talking about as regards the depraved Catholic doctrines of original sin and hell.
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These so-called nuns were deeply disturbed and indoctrinated by a sect in the Catholic Church that was imported from France. Look up the Convent of Port Royal and why it was closed and declared heretical by Rome. These people then set up shop in Maynooth of all places, and the disease of heresy spread there to all over Ireland.
The most perfect and accomplished point of this was how it infiltrated Ireland under the guise of Christianity and Catholicism. It was all hidden under religious penitential practices that were rampant here. We all know them.
They viewed these children as sin incarnate and evil. They saw the mothers as the same.
These so-called nuns had sick ideas about sex. They hated themselves because they had vaginas and men because they had penises and when they were put together — of which the result was children — they went ballistic because it represented all that was unholy and cursed. Sex. Don’t be fooled. The Catholic Church is still the same. The people who thought like this are still rampant in the Church.
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They are just clever enough to hide them because they know civil society will see them for what they truly are — sick, depraved, with infantile ideas about sexuality.
Remember what Jesus said about those who hurt children and millstones. Well I hope and pray these depraved so-called nuns and priests are at the bottom of many seas for eternity. Amen.
I totally agree with the sentiment about the use of Croke Park for anything other than Gaelic games, the exception being the Dubs (“Letters to the Editor: Croke Park should be for Gaelic games”, April 18). I played senior club football for 20 years and minor county, but never had the opportunity to play in Croke Park.Â
There are several county players who have never played in Croke Park. You could count on one hand the number of senior football games Fermanagh, Cavan, Antrim, Wicklow, Clare Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford, Leitrim, Sligo, Longford, or Offaly, have played in Croke Park over the past 20 years. The same can be said about hurling.
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I, as treasurer of our club, recall collecting funds to pay our club’s levy towards the redevelopment of Croke Park. If I had known what was going to happen, I am not sure I would have done that at a time our club had very poor facilities. During our club development, it never got a penny from Croke Park.
It’s all about the few large counties who win year in, year out.
We now have a situation where most counties will have no meaningful games by mid-May. We are told this is to facilitate the clubs, which is rubbish as everybody knows the better players head off to US as soon as they exit the Championship. The Tailteann Cup is only a sop to the weaker counties.
It’s all about the money, which is a very short-term view. We have handed over our best facility to promote other sports. Gaelic football should be played during May, June, July, August, and September, not all packed into the winter/spring months when we have frosty weather. It is no wonder numbers at our games have dropped off so much with the league and championship crammed into a few weeks.
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What is sometimes missing in the debate about cultural traditions and rural self-determination is the fact that the vast majority of Irish people genuinely care about the fox.
A glance at social media in the weeks after the Dáil vote on fox-hunting in December — and in the days coming up to Sinn Féin’s ard fheis — reveals that people all across Ireland, rural and urban alike, abhor the chasing to exhaustion and tearing apart of a live animal for “sport”.
The claim that a campaign to ban it is driving a wedge between rural and urban Ireland is positively Machiavellian — creating the very division it purports to denounce. It is also insulting to the compassion and empathy of the many people living in rural Ireland who care deeply about animals.
Consecutive opinion polls have shown that almost as many people in rural areas want fox hunting banned.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would do well to take note. This issue is not going to go away. Amid a cost-of-living crisis, rising fuel costs, and lack of housing, less tangible, cultural issues are still important to voters from all backgrounds. Irish people no longer want to live in a country where cruelty is protected by law.
