Updates
Reached 100 supporters
February 19, 2014
18 Comments
I agree wholeheatedly with your petition and I feel strongly that the New Junior Cycle is degrading to education. It is a money saving method rather than an effort to improve the standard of education. Teachers marking their own exams and papers is open to parental interference, bias and ultimately will be determined by a teacher's personal standard. Standardised marking schemes without indepth training, such as the current exam conferences, will be open to interpretation and thus will be largely ineffective.
The proposals are simply unworkable. Correcting the work of your own students changes the dynamic of your classroom forever, and not in a positive way.
As a teacher in a rural area where everyone knows everyone or is related to everyone, teacher assessment would create untold problems !!
I believe that external moderation of academic work is vital if the certification process is to mean anything. The assessment process should be as independent as possible and teachers assessing their own students has a lack of objectivity which would lessen the grading system.
By making us assess our own students it will totally destroy the dynamic that exists between teacher and student and it will make us vulnerable to even more abuse from parents who already feel entitled to question decisions we make that don't even have a bearing on the current Junior Cert. We are already so vulnerable this will make us even more so and it will destroy our relationship with our students, the new JC needs external moderation.
Poor training provided, lack of clear guidelines on moderation etc
A certificate at junior level has the same value now no matter what school is attended. Under the proposed system will a student from school A be short-changed in terms of the value placed on her J.C. compared with the J.C. of a student attending school B? I expect Principals, Bords of Managment, etc will be putting pressure in some form on teachers to be as "generous" as possible when grading - poor performance in J.C. does,after all, reflect on the perception of the school in the locality! Now the results will be within the remit of the teachers in each school. Parents too will want the best results for their sons and daughters. Will they accept that Ms--- or Mr--- have the power to give a grade ? Currently I teach 204 junior level students. 75 of them are required to do a 3rd yr project and write a booklet on that. I honestly do not think it will be possible to cope with the workload when all 204 are producing a number of projects each every year- teaching, mentoring, grading, and recording 408(min) or 612(likely) !!
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Updates
Reached 100 supporters
February 19, 2014
18 Comments
Our education system is currently highly esteemed abroad. We can stand over the grades awarded to our students, confident that their work has been corrected fairly and transparently. We know that all our students sit the same exams and they are assessed by those who have undertaken thorough training. Parents, teachers, the students themselves can trust the examination system. Having attended the first "new junior cert" in-service, it is clear that the powers that be do not know where they are heading, how they are going to get there! Saving money is the priority and if the education of Ireland's children must be sacrificed to salvage the economy, apparently, so be it! I only hope that teachers get together over this and finally let their voices be heard.
I agree wholeheatedly with your petition and I feel strongly that the New Junior Cycle is degrading to education. It is a money saving method rather than an effort to improve the standard of education. Teachers marking their own exams and papers is open to parental interference, bias and ultimately will be determined by a teacher's personal standard. Standardised marking schemes without indepth training, such as the current exam conferences, will be open to interpretation and thus will be largely ineffective.
The proposals are simply unworkable. Correcting the work of your own students changes the dynamic of your classroom forever, and not in a positive way.
As a teacher in a rural area where everyone knows everyone or is related to everyone, teacher assessment would create untold problems !!
I believe that external moderation of academic work is vital if the certification process is to mean anything. The assessment process should be as independent as possible and teachers assessing their own students has a lack of objectivity which would lessen the grading system.
By making us assess our own students it will totally destroy the dynamic that exists between teacher and student and it will make us vulnerable to even more abuse from parents who already feel entitled to question decisions we make that don't even have a bearing on the current Junior Cert. We are already so vulnerable this will make us even more so and it will destroy our relationship with our students, the new JC needs external moderation.
Poor training provided, lack of clear guidelines on moderation etc
A certificate at junior level has the same value now no matter what school is attended. Under the proposed system will a student from school A be short-changed in terms of the value placed on her J.C. compared with the J.C. of a student attending school B? I expect Principals, Bords of Managment, etc will be putting pressure in some form on teachers to be as "generous" as possible when grading - poor performance in J.C. does,after all, reflect on the perception of the school in the locality! Now the results will be within the remit of the teachers in each school. Parents too will want the best results for their sons and daughters. Will they accept that Ms--- or Mr--- have the power to give a grade ? Currently I teach 204 junior level students. 75 of them are required to do a 3rd yr project and write a booklet on that. I honestly do not think it will be possible to cope with the workload when all 204 are producing a number of projects each every year- teaching, mentoring, grading, and recording 408(min) or 612(likely) !!
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Our education system is currently highly esteemed abroad. We can stand over the grades awarded to our students, confident that their work has been corrected fairly and transparently. We know that all our students sit the same exams and they are assessed by those who have undertaken thorough training. Parents, teachers, the students themselves can trust the examination system. Having attended the first "new junior cert" in-service, it is clear that the powers that be do not know where they are heading, how they are going to get there! Saving money is the priority and if the education of Ireland's children must be sacrificed to salvage the economy, apparently, so be it! I only hope that teachers get together over this and finally let their voices be heard.