Secondary teachers are set to oppose key elements of radical new reform plans from the Minister for Education.
A meeting of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) next week will signal firm opposition to the introduction of continuous assessment. The ASTI also opposes Ruairí Quinn's plan for so-called "unannounced inspections" in schools where the work of teachers can be assessed without any notice.
Mr Quinn wants more continuous assessment in the Junior and Leaving Certs as part of a move to promote more independent learning by students. The union says it will firmly oppose any new scheme in which teachers assess their own pupils.
The department is pushing to introduce unannounced inspections at second level after it was introduced in primary schools last year. A report based on the findings was highly critical of teaching standards in some schools.
The department's chief inspector, Dr Harold Hislop, said he was "particularly concerned about the significant proportion of lessons – over 14 per cent – in both English and mathematics [at primary level] where the learning experiences provided for pupils were not satisfactory".
Mr Quinn has also repeated his determination to press ahead with exam reform. He has asked Minister of State Seán Sherlock to examine ways of improving the performance in mathematics in the short term.
He also hopes a conference next month involving both the Higher Education Authority and National Council for Curriculum Assessment will give an impetus to reform of the Leaving Cert and the CAO points system.
The Union of Students in Ireland has called for the Leaving Cert to be overhauled, saying the exam is in "dire" need of change.
Union president Gary Redmond said a new system of continuous assessment should be introduced for a fairer assessment of secondary school students over a longer period of time. "The high failure rate in . . . science and maths in this year's Leaving Certificate also needs to be examined, and the question of why only 50 per cent of teachers are qualified to teach maths needs to be looked at," Mr Redmond said yesterday.
DCU president Prof Brian MacCraith said a national enterprise education partnership was needed to address the growing crisis in teaching science, technology, engineering and maths. The partnership, he said, would involve representatives from industry, the education sector and government formally working together to tackle key issues within education, with a particular focus on those subjects.
"We can no longer operate in an isolated manner. Business and education leaders must work together in a structured, considered and formal way to achieve a major system change rather than delivering multiple projects which are often ad-hoc and localised."
Long-term solutions were no longer sufficient and urgent action was required, Prof MacCraith added. "This time next year we need to start seeing a difference."