Seán Crowe TD Shares Teachers’ legitimate concerns over Junior Cert reform

Dublin South West Sinn Féin TD, Seán Crowe, has said that he shares many of the legitimate concerns of teachers over the so called changes to the Junior Cert reforms. Deputy Crowe is critical of Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan’s approach and her failure to engage with teachers, their unions and that as well as taking on the portfolio she seems to have adopted the same approach to the matter as former Minister Ruairí Quinn. There are some serious concerns held by the teachers regarding changes to the Junior Cert including the current systems limitations and Deputy Crowe calls on the Minister O’Sullivan, to proactively engage and start addressing their concerns.

Deputy Seán Crowe said:

“There is no disagreement that there is a need to reform the Junior Cert and the whole Junior Cycle in Irish secondary schools.

“Sinn Féin has publicly supported a reform programme as have the teachers and their respective Unions. Any reforms or changes have to be managed and agreed to by all those ultimately delivering the new system. Minister Jan O’Sullivan has unfortunately adopted the same approach as her predecessor and failed to meaningfully engage with stakeholders.

“Contrary to the Government’s spin, teachers are not taking this strike action over some petty concerns. They are primarily concerned about how this will impact on their students and have made clear their support for reform, as have the teachers unions. However the changes proposed by the Government are poorly thought out and will possibly have an effect on the credibility of the exam and on the roll out of the education system.

“Teachers are quite rightly pointing out that international best practice is to externalise the correction of assessments, and that the Minister has not made clear why she is actually changing the model and how it will be more beneficial to students and the education system.

“The Government’s so called reforms are also about asking hard pressed teachers to deliver more, with more pupils and crucially far less resources.

“This year has seen a further 1% cut in the capitation grants for schools, so it isn’t clear how the Department of Education expects them to deliver and  implement radical changes at a time when hundreds of millions of Euros has been removed from the education budget.

“While Sinn Féin is  clearly in favour and  supports educational reforms, we cannot like many others support changes to a system that lumps more work on already over-burdened teachers in schools, and where the goal is more about cutting departmental expenditure than any meaningful process of enhancing a young persons education.”