'It's not fair' Laois teachers on strike over Leaving Cert changes

Laois secondary school teachers braved the bitter winter weather to strike with their ASTI and TUI unions on Tuesday lunchtime, November 19 at the proposed changes to the Leaving Cert exams.

At St Mary's CBS in Portlaoise, Emer Lewens, languages teacher was among a group marching with placards. 

"We're trying to protect the Leaving Cert standards. They want to change it, we are pro change but it needs to be revised, we're not happy with the changes. I personally really feel that the Junior Cert which they have changed needs to be looked at again,  as a Modern Foreign Languages teacher. There's no oral exam from first to third year but they are proposing that 40% of the Leaving Cert will be based on an oral exam.," she explained.

Noel Donlon is a Maths teacher at the CBS.

"If they implement it the way they implemented the Junior Cert it will be a total joke. There was no exam papers, no preparation they just introduced it. They made mistakes with the Junior Cert and we just want to make sure they don't push this through and make the same mistakes again. 

He said that the Department of Education had consulted with teachers but that the process was "very rapid".

The proposal for English is that half of the exam will be done in 5th year, and half in 6th year, with 40% on continuous assessment.

"There's some difference between a guy in 5th year and a girl as regard capabilities.

"Maths will be 40% project and we're not sure how that will work. At the moment there are two exams in the Leaving Cert and one in the Junior Cert. The problem is it looks like there will be a dumbing down, and eventually only one exam in Leaving Cert," Mr Donlon said.

Another teacher raised concerns that the changes will make it too easy for students to pass off online content as their own.

"With continual assessment, the development of AI means that it would be very easy to use to create a project without any recourse. Using AI where the work is intended to be their own. You just put something into ChatGBT," she said.

Ms Lewens points out what she sees as waste of money in education.

"If I could make another point on Norma Foley's covers for mobile phones. It's an absolute waste of taxpayers' money. We all have cardboard boxes in our classrooms to put the mobiles in. I find it quite upsetting and ridiculous that they're going to spend millions to put a mobile phone into a case. I know of schools where they have to employ somebody to look after them. We are professionals. We are capable of putting a phone in a box," she said.

Evelyn Quinlan teaches English at the Portlaoise school.

"The Junior Cert we have no idea how it will be structured every year. The poetry or the novel mightn't even come up at all. We think that it needs to be checked before they go on to the Leaving Cert. We don't even know how many marks questions are worth, we are really concerned about the junior cert. Lets get that fixed before we move on. It's all gone too fast, let's slow down and really just spend more time checking in with the teachers on the ground.

They are all prepared to come out again for further strikes if the unions make no progress with the Department of Education.

"Absolutely, it's not fair, it's not right on the students or the teachers or the education system in general," Ms Quinlan said.