Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for the update on the junior certificate. I welcome the fact that Mr. Travers has been asked to intervene and try to engage with the Minister and teachers' representatives to see if there is a way towards reaching an agreement with which everybody can be comfortable. It is unfortunate that it has come to this. Had the Government taken a different approach, primarily the Minister's predecessor, we might have avoided it. We are back to what was on the table before the Government came to office, but in a much more difficult industrial relations sphere. Those who should have been partners in the reform are now in conflict with the Government.

The Minister's decision some weeks ago to return to the proposal for external assessment of 60% of the new junior certificate and for it to continue to be State certified is welcome . If the former Minister, Deputy Quinn, and the Government had engaged with teachers from the outset, instead of taking a dictatorial and solo approach to important reforms, we would not have found ourselves in the situation we are in now. An accommodation could have been reached in a way that would have ensured we would see reform implemented more quickly than see now.

Now, both the Department and the teacher representatives are retiring into their trenches and are becoming very much focused on the principle of either complete external or internal assessment of the remaining 40%. The focus should be on the end curriculum and the learning experience for the student, how it can be delivered and what agreement can be reached to ensure the 40% being assessed internally in the school leads to the student having an improved curriculum and learning experience. They focus should be on getting down to the nitty gritty and discussing the detail of this to ensure this is the outcome. As long as either the Department or the teachers stick to their view, they cannot get down to the level of detail required to see what the experience of the student will be.

I hope Mr. Travers can engage with the Department and the teacher representatives and get down to that detail. I believe the Department's unwillingness to engage on the detail of this with the teacher unions unless they agreed in advance of engagement that it would be internal assessment in the schools put an unnecessary barrier against talks on the 40% assessment that is to happen over second and third year in school. If the Department had offered to talk to the unions about their remaining concerns, we could have avoided a situation where we have already had a one day strike and face a potential second.

Hopefully, the Minister's decision to re-engage Mr. Travers will allow a platform where we can have serious discussion between her and the teacher representatives as to how the 40% assessment can be delivered and how to deal with the issues and concerns in regard to that so as to avoid a further strike day and get real agreement. I believe this agreement could have been achieved three years ago if the Government had taken a different approach than it has. Unfortunately, even though curriculum change has started with English, we are probably further behind overall than when the Government came to office.