English classes are a mess following ASTI vote on junior cycle reform

QUESTION: As a parent of two second-year students, I am deeply concerned at the mess that seems to be emerging in my children's English classes over the past few weeks, as to how and what exactly will be examined in their Junior Cert English exam in June 2017. Can you advise me what is going on?

ANSWER: The whole future of the reform of junior cycle, which has been years in development, hangs in the balance. Unless it is resolved by Christmas, it may collapse entirely. How have we come to this juncture?

Radical amendments, proposed by Ruairí Quinn to the original proposals sent by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment to the Department of Education, have one by one been dropped in negotiations over the past year. In fact, a senior trade union source told me that when the teacher unions got up from the negotiation table in May, all issues were resolved between the parties.

The TUI, having secured such a favourable outcome for members, recommended it, and more than 60 per cent voted to accept the agreed proposals by a 70:30 margin.

Unfortunately the ASTI (of whom I have been a member for 40 years) could not get a decision from its teacher representatives, and the proposals were sent to members to consider without any recommendation.

A group of teachers set themselves up in opposition to the proposals and lobbied for rejection.

Nobody in the ASTI leadership tried to explain to members that they had in effect secured 100 per cent of what they were looking for.

All members got a ballot paper posted to their homes, with a prepaid response envelope, but more than 60 per cent of ASTI members treated the correspondence as junk mail and binned it. Only 38 per cent of members voted, rejecting the reforms by a 55:45 margin.

How can this be? Sadly, the ASTI’s structures are completely outdated, and the vast majority of its members have no interaction with its structures. The evening monthly branch meeting attracts almost no young teachers.

Proposals for reform, to involve practising teachers, have been rejected by the members who have dominated these structures for years.

We now have a ludicrous situation in schools regarding both TUI and ASTI members: second-year English students are taught the department- approved curriculum by a TUI teacher, who has had comprehensive in-service training, while in the classroom next door an ASTI member muddles through, not knowing what he/she should be teaching, and unable to attend in-service training as a result of the no vote.

The sad truth is the ASTI has ceased to function as a representative organisation for its members, and the ones to suffer will be the students.

• Your questions answered by education analyst Brian Mooney. Email queries to askbrian@irishtimes.com