Cork teachers join national protest over Leaving Cert changes

A recent “explosion in AI” will make it very difficult to grade the proposed new Leaving Certificate assessments, said a Cork teacher, accusing the Department of Education of “experimenting on children”.

More than 1,500 Cork secondary teachers across over 50 schools took part in a nationwide lunchtime protest yesterday over changes to the senior cycle which they believe risk undermining both educational standards and fairness.

The protests were jointly organised by the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI) and the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI).

They are calling for a delay in the implementation of the senior cycle redevelopment programme to address numerous issues. Aaron Wolfe, principal of Coláiste Éamann Rís and member of the ASTI’s principals and deputy principals’ committee, said that 50 teachers at his school took part in the protest, as well as school therapy dog Kora from My Canine Companion.

Mr Wolfe told The Echo: “We have an exam that has huge integrity — tampering with it without proper consultation with the teachers on the ground is a dangerous thing to do.

“Policymakers and practitioners have to work together.

“A lot of parents are not happy with the changes to the Junior Certificate, and now they’re trying to change the Leaving Cert without fully recognising the fallout from the Junior Certificate.

“These reforms are not taking into account a recent explosion in AI — it’s fine to say we’ll have loads of project work, but will it be student work or artificial intelligence work?”

The changes will also widen the gaps of inequity between schools, he claimed, explaining: “Schools don’t have the infrastructure to complete some of these tasks they’re putting on us — we might not have enough IT devices, or they brought in PE as a Leaving Certificate subject but we don’t even have a PE hall.

“Parents shouldn’t have to travel far away to get to the newest and most expensive school, we are supposed to have free education and it’s supposed to be equal”, but the projects mean that those with better facilities will perform better in the exams, which were formerly a great leveller, he said.

Mr Wolfe described the changes as “a distraction to the real problems in education”, saying:

“We have the biggest teacher shortage in history — how are we meant to get people in to teach this new curriculum when we are leaving classes unsupervised at the moment because the subs that we need just aren’t out there?

“We also have a mental health crisis among young people, and we are not being properly supported with therapists.

“All these projects caused at Junior Certificate was an awful lot of pressure and stress for students, there were always pinpoints of pressure, but now the exams are all year long, so there’s no break from it.

“They are tampering for the sake of tampering, but the stakes are too high to be experimenting on young people’s education — these children only get one chance at these exams.”

Mick Finn, who is running as an Independent candidate in Cork South Central in the general election, and who worked in school environments for 15 years, urged Education Minister Norma Foley to pause and listen to teachers.