Surprised at the lack of respect for teachers from some people here. It would be fairly damming statement on any teacher who didn’t put the effort into marking papers because they weren’t being paid.

The country is broke, we need to save money and this is a good way to help us do that. The point on spreading the load is also a good point and should lead to a higher standard of marking. Of course teachers shouldn’t be paid more for supervising exams either and that should be done on a rota basis.

I agree in theory with the idea on teachers doing the correcting as the amount of holidays teachers receive is huge. However, it is very important that the exams are marked correctly. If you have teachers who don’t want to correct them doing the work with no added incentive some teachers might not be as thorough as they should be. I think something that is more important is to make teachers more accountable. I think everybody has experienced teachers that have been brilliant but also teachers who are quite the opposite. Teachers who are not up to the job of teaching should not be permitted to continue getting paid by the state to “teach”.

I don’t understand why those who complain about secondary school teachers so much don’t just become secondary school teachers themselves, particularly seeing as our jobs are so cushy, we are so lazy, we have no special skills (it almost seems we just walked in off the street sometimes), and we get paid so much. Really wouldn’t it be easier to just become one of us?

Last time I heard from those fools they were debating whether or not to make Maggie T an honorary life member. In their own FB page they note that they are really looking forward to the post debate drinks! Seriously I hope you idiots enjoy your little summer camp that no doubt your politician daddies paid for. The problem with this country is that teachers who should be teaching end up trying to run our country.

As a teacher if ALL teachers were required to then it would cut down on the amount of marking that would be done for each teacher. I heard that 1 in 8 teachers do the marking. I could be wrong on that and it takes about 3 weeks. If teachers did the marking then it would probably be a 4 day – 1 week which isn’t all that bad.

Not only that but it should be part of their contract that they have to supervise exams also. They can do a roster, say once year every two or three years. The payments for exam supervision and exam corrections are very generous for a country that is bankrupt.

I’d prefer to see teachers having to sit the exam of the subjects that they are teaching as part of their CPD. They sould have to achieve an A grade or else they don’t qualify for their increment. Maybe once every three years so that there is still a panel to invigilate and do corrections. The good teachers would have nothing to fear from this. It’s not unheard of for ‘instructors’ to sit the same exams as their students in order to maintain their instructor rating.

The defence and denial of a minority of terrible teachers by the teaching unions is a disgrace and that’s why the mob will jump on the bandwagon about this issue.

The majority teachers are very good and considering some of the crap that they have to endure, they should have the option of taking the summer off.

Why don’t YFG mark the papers themselves?
Seem to be doing fk all else but talking shyte tbh.

i have no problem with that however Youth Fine Gael say in the report that correcting state exams should be “part of their contract with no additional remuneration”, but the fact is that it isn’t part of their contracts and it wasn’t part of the Croke Park agreement so I doubt it will ever happen, particularly given the Junior Cert changes. If Youth Fine Gael wanted to do anything other than grab headlines they should have put a motion forward that teachers should have to “supervise” state exams that would also save money and would make more sense as logistically it would be much easier to manage as teachers would be merely required to stay at their current post locations for an additional three weeks. That won’t happen either but good luck to Young Fine Gael for managing to grab a few headlines; next week they might put some motions to other public services workers like the defence forces, Gardai, health services staff. And what about primary teachers & members of Dail Eireann, they have long holidays too, perhaps they could join forces with secondary school teachers in July & August and clean the streets or provide some other form of public service…..

Teachers not bankers, sure it’s all the teachers fault….yadda, yadda, yadda….

It seems fair to me that a teacher currently getting paid EUR40k to work 167 days a year should get paid EUR56k to work 235 days a year (a similar number to most other people).

Those extra 68 days work could certainly include correcting exams.

“Young Fine Gael”! A laughable concept in itself.

Do teachers just have to work 167 days a year on full pay, or is that just an urban myth?
Is it a 9 hour day?

The new Fine Gael philosophy? Forced labour without pay?

Are we to have Fine Gael and Labour Gulags?

Extend this to the Fine Gael support-base, the farmers, and you will see how far you get!

Typical streak of historical blueshirt, dictatorial anti-worker bias.

Pity it has been inbred into the baby-blueshirts too!

It is time that people realised that this idea is not solely for teachers – it is for all workers.

It has been commenced with the Jobsbridge interns – slave-labour for the employers which is used to do away with full-time permanent positions.

Éamon Gilmore is in danger of presiding over the final demise of the Labour Party- he has supped with the devil for too long, and has gotten too used to the ‘long spoon’ required!

There is a lot more obvious areas of the system that YFG could be addressing rather than trying to throw out something that they know that the public will agree with overall.

Their suggestion appears poorly thought out though there is a point in there somewhere.

First, I’ve just finished 4 years in UL to become a teacher. It’s my opinion that teachers don’t get paid enough, have too much holidays and don’t take on certain things they should take on. I know a lot of people will concentrate on the first line there. To set some context: I’ve worked in private industry and I’ve been on placement in schools too. The idea that teaching is a cushy job is absolutely ludicrous and is thrown out by those who either simply don’t know or have experience of the kind of teacher who deserves to be fired.

The system I’d like to be a part of would have teachers correcting examination material for their own pupils. There would be a longer school year – about a month longer. The state examinations would be determined by awarding 50% of each “semester” for every subject in project work. The other 50% can be down to written/practical taken each semester.
Teachers can be assigned to visit other local schools on non-teaching days (over christmas/ new year and early summer) to review as an external examiner currently would for Construction studies projects.
Even paying teachers a mileage allowance and for these additional days would be offset from correction costs currently.

The effects of this could potentially completely change the educational experience for pupils also. Manageable chunks of syllabus is covered in reasonable amounts of time for both teacher and pupil. It could highlight areas where syllabi are overloaded. It would allow teachers to step up to the plate and show that they can be professional – and highlight the unprofessional for some action to be taken against them (finally??!). It would mean that the exams which every school does every year could have more significant standing and to some extent allow pupils to recognise the 3rd level way of doing things.

It would also have the potential to generate some faith in the points system (Lots of people call the points system a problem – I personally don’t think it is, the problem IMO lies more in the mode of examination and the educational experience that encourages)

Most importantly, it would mean more value out of teachers, and IMO contribute to a view of a more valuable teacher.

Ahh the Hitler Youth. Persuasive as ever

Teachers up in Northern Ireland have a statutory salary range from EUR23,685 to EUR40,327.

South of the border it’s a much warmer EUR33,041 to EUR59,327.

Perhaps teachers from Northern Ireland could come down during the summer months and correct the exams to help top up their salaries, while our teachers are recuperating.

We need to adopt a new constitution which enables us to retrospectively claw-back the pensions of retiree ministers and change the contracts of teachers. Under the present constitution, we are in a straightjacket.

Most other European countries require teachers to correct exam papers. In Ireland, teachers get 3 months holidays. Personally, I don’t think FG will change anything because they recently proved they need a bigger pot to tap in order to keep the party running. We need to reform the public sector by electing either Sinn Fein or the Socialists. Sinn Fein have recently pledged these reforms if they win the next election.