Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his question and note his deep interest in this subject matter.

The first meeting of the national working group on junior cycle reform took place on Friday last, 17 January. I would have loved it to take place on the last Friday in June of last year but, unfortunately, one of the unions involved found itself on the other side of the Haddington Road negotiations and we were not in a position to hold that meeting on the last Friday in June. It is expected that there will be meetings of the group every three to four weeks over the next few months and thereafter while the new junior cycle is being phased in. Three sub-groups have been established to address continual professional development, CPD, assessment and school resources.

This new working group will be a forum where the concerns of the partners, not only the teachers' unions but including the teachers, can be heard. Through dialogue, the concerns raised can be addressed so as to enable the successful implementation of the junior cycle to proceed over the next number of years.

The number of days of in-service training that needs to be provided to each English teacher during the phased roll-out of the curriculum was to be three. An additional 1.5 days has now been provided for English teachers, raising the total to 4.5 in all. The in-service training is being rolled out on a phased basis to ensure that it is relevant to teachers in their work in adapting to the new curriculum.

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