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

My question specifically asked the number of occasions on which the Minister has engaged with the teaching partners specifically on the issue of junior cycle reform. Junior cycle reform is something which, by and large, my party very much welcomes and had been involved with in the preparation for and the establishment of the working group. However, it is also something to which the Minister made changes after he came to office. At the ASTI teacher conference last year, he described it as a personal political project. That is why I specifically asked him for the occasions on which he met with those concerned to specifically discuss this personal political project of junior cycle reform.

As the Minister knows, we are facing the prospect next month of the teachers holding lunchtime protests at school gates because of the way he has handled this. I believe the Minister has dealt with this in a very offhand manner and he has not engaged with the teachers in the way he needed to for something as important as junior cycle reform. The NCCA working group noted that:

In countries such as Australia, Canada and Scotland, assessment for qualification includes an externally moderated school-based element. Such moderation provides assurance to all that where school-based assessment is used, there is consistency of standard across schools.

The Minister changed that. I would ask on what advice he changed it and whether, in the process of doing so he consulted or engaged with those who are going to have to deliver it.

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