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

There is a lot of expertise in the area of moderation, assessment, learning and pedagogy. I will outline one of the reasons we are changing, using as an example the area we are talking about, secondary school teachers. It is a highly unsatisfactory situation when a bright boy or girl, the star pupil - I am thinking of schools right across the country - leaves secondary school, goes to university, comes back after a three- or four-year degree, gets probated as a teacher in the same school, qualifies in that school, joins the staff of that school and stays there throughout his or her career, without any other experience. What I would like to see, and it will be a matter for discussion with the educational partners, is that somebody who wants to become a fully qualified secondary teacher, which is different from a primary school teacher for various reasons, will have experience of a wide range of schools before he or she is made full-time. I think that we need that kind of experience. We are also addressing the issue of employment conditions, which are outrageous at the moment.

Senator O'Donnell asked whether I regard teachers as experts. Yes, I do, but the level of expertise depends very much on the pedagogical skills that they have acquired along the way, which varies. It varies much more in the secondary or post-primary space than it does with primary school teachers, because a primary school teacher, generally, has wanted to be a teacher from day one. Not every post-primary teacher wanted to be a teacher on day one of his or her university education. Some of them ended up teaching - and have become very good teachers - but there is a difference.

Senator Healy Eames talked about a number of things. I know she has expertise in this area and it was her PhD topic. So much is based on experience and best practice around the world. All of which has been tapped into and is available to us. We do this in order to avail of what lessons have been learned and what mistakes have been made so that we do not repeat the mistakes of others. We are quite prepared to engage in all of that and to adopt an attitude of willingness to try something a particular way and if it does not work, as we anticipated, to be open to changes and modify things as we go along.

The Senator suggested a ratio of 20:80 for external moderation. These are the kinds of thing we could discuss. We could look at how it might be done regarding all of these issues. However, I am confronted with the representatives of the two teachers' unions who simply said: "No. We are opposed to this in principle and therefore we are not going to discuss the details."