Results 721-740 of 19,032 for speaker:Ruairi Quinn

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: Now the Senator is talking.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: We are changing the whole way initial teacher education is being delivered over the four years. There are suggestions to the effect that there should be a greater concentration on mathematical teaching during that four-year period. The requirement for higher-level maths is one of many suggestions. There is no single solution for any of these issues; it is a mixture of all of them.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: I ask Mr. Hislop to deal with that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: We will get the Deputy a full breakdown of the €4.5 million.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: We are here nearly two hours. I am more than happy because I am learning all the time from what is being said. I am at the disposal of the committee and it is up to the Chair to decide. There is no reluctance on my part in that regard, as members will have seen over the past couple of years. I have heard very clearly what Deputy O'Brien has said and I recognise that he is reporting...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: I will respond as quickly as I can. We are all trying to achieve the same thing. Change is always difficult, particularly when we have gotten used to doing things in a particular way. In response to Deputy Griffin, there is constant assessment going on in our education system. Kids are assessed in terms of literacy and numeracy at different stages right through primary school and now...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: I respect the Deputy as a professional. The question is whether one turns the assessment into a judgment that is used for third-party purposes by a student. There is deep concern about that issue. It is not the case that we do not have assessment until the leaving certificate at the end of 14 years. Assessments for 14 year olds will now be part and parcel of the process and it will be...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: The Senator does not have to compliment me on it because I did not write it.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: I will put it to the Senator this way, because I got a lot of response to the teachers' conference in regard to the reception which I do not think did anybody any good, there are 87,000 registered teachers, registered in the Teaching Council. They were registered for the first time, following legislation passed in 2006. We do not do education reform on the trot, or very quickly, in this...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: All the other education partners and the wider community are broadly in favour of reform of the junior cycle. The two teachers' unions have a mandate from their members not to engage. I think some may have suspected that I was going to make some kind of concession at the conferences. We have established a working group, which the teachers' unions attend. They are engaged but are not...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: I refer to a briefing by Dr. Alan Wall and the delivery of CPD to teachers over the past number of years in different forms. The format in which it was delivered to English teachers in this instance, because that is the cohort group about whom we are talking, was that a year before the process started, they got one day, based on the likely changes, and then one day on a yearly basis, as they...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: I have listened to, and heard, that genuinely held and conscientiously held opinion. I am open to suggestions about how we can eliminate the perception of a school at one end of the town and the school at the other end of the town.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: I have never lost trust in the teachers and teaching profession, institutionally and from a personal point of view, having had three children of different abilities who have gone through the education system. I say this respectfully as a matter of record rather than opinion. The two secondary school or post-primary teaching unions have been opposed in principle to any change in this area...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: We are prepared to talk about the co-ordinating posts for subjects. We have already raised the issue with the management groups but we have no one to talk to about this.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: The announcement I made was that we were going to reform after 25 years of stalling. That was a political announcement and I took responsibility for it. I said it at the ASTI conference last and, in so far as I was heard, at the conference this year I am open to discuss in detail the speed at which we travel, the best way to get there and the rest of it as long as no one has a veto on the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: 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...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: Yes, I have.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: I have already said why the short courses are not compulsory. It was felt that this was too much to ask at the present time, so we have made it voluntary, through nobody's fault. The Haddington Road agreement concerned public sector pay, in the main, and had nothing as such to do with education. One particular union found itself in a position in which it was reconsidering its attitude to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: There has been all sorts of talk on the margins of different meetings. As regards a formal exchange of views, the answer is "No," because the union representatives have not been empowered by their members to engage ad infinitum. I hope I will say this accurately, because there are representatives present from the two unions involved. My understanding is that the unions are still at the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection: Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills (13 May 2014)

Ruairi Quinn: Yes. The Department is open to and aware of all of these possibilities. If we get engagement, we will be prepared to explore ways in which we can address teachers' concerns. I recognise that people have legitimate concerns which are genuinely held. It is not some kind of negotiating position. These are legitimate and genuine concerns for many teachers. They are afraid of coming under...