The Government has endorsed a contingency plan for this year’s Leaving and Junior cert exams put forward today by the Minister for Education and Science, Dr Woods.
Following a Cabinet meeting, the Government said an appeal should be made to the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) to give the benchmarking body an opportunity to listen to their case.
The Government endorsed Dr Woods’s contingency plan for the exams and last week's Labour court recommendation. It said benchmarking was the only forum in which ASTI’s claim could be considered.
It also supported Dr Wood’s appeal to the union to suspend their industrial action while their case was being heard by the benchmarking body.
The Cabinet expressed its concern "at the precipitate response of ASTI and at the fact that the terms of the Labour Court recommendation were not put to a ballot of ASTI members."
Before the Cabinet meeting two teachers’ unions had already objected to the Minister’s plans which are reported to include the use of the public as exam supervisors and the recruitment of graduates to help correct the exams.
The Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) is to ballot its members next week on whether it will co-operate with the plans. A spokesman for TUI said the union has recommended its members should not to participate in the contingency plan.
ASTI said non-teachers who supervised exams while the dispute was continuing would be "strike-breaking". The union’s standing committee is to meet tomorrow to discuss its response to the Department's plans.
ASTI is to hold the first of a series of one day strikes tomorrow in pursuit of their claim for a 30 per cent pay increase.
Five further one-day stoppages are to take place before the end of the month.
A motion proposed by Fine Gael to the Oireachtas committee on education calling on the Government to enter direct talks with ASTI was defeated this afternoon.
The motion was defeated by the committee "at the behest of the Government majority", according to Mr Michael Creed, the Fine Gael spokesman on Education and Science.
Mr Creed said that a second "compromise" motion was then passed unanimously that called on the Labour Court to further investigate interim payments to teachers to try to convince ASTI to lift their strike action.
"This was an attempt to deflect attention away from the Government on this issue," he claimed.
Mr Creed earlier told ireland.comthat only direct talks could rescue this year's exams from "the chaos of the Minister for Education's so called contingency arrangements".