Christmas Break
Please be advised that the ISSU National office is closed from 5pm on Monday 22nd December 2014 and will reopen on Monday 5th January 2014.Any urgent queries can be redirected via email to secretariat@issu.ie
Students Locked Out
PRESS STATEMENT
The National Student Executive of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union (ISSU) regretfully confirms that second-level schools will close tomorrow (December 2nd) due to industrial action by the ASTI and TUI.The ISSU is very supportive of the proposed reforms to the Junior Cycle, and believes that this is in the best interest of the students.Speaking this evening, Craig Mc Hugh (President) said:“Teachers are using students as pawns in this industrial dispute, whilst students and their parents are ultimately powerless to the system. The new JCSA is good for students, and we want Teachers to re-enter talks with the Minister to ensure this does not escalate any further.Taking students away from their timetabled classes is creating a barrier for students as they prepare for their Junior and Leaving Certificate exams this upcoming summer. Furthermore, disruption on this scale impacts on all students as they prepare for Christmas exams. This strike is not conducive to progressive reform and meaningful discussions with the Department of Education and Skills.” ***ENDS***Notes to editor:The Irish Second-Level Students’ Union has engaged with Junior Cycle reform discussions and consultations since 2011, and our stance on supporting this reform has been mandated by three annual assemblies, our internal advisory panels and nationwide student focus groups.
ISSU President to Students on JCSA.
I’m a procrastinator. But thankfully that’s what I am – I postpone things but I guess they get done in the end and people don’t notice too much thankfully; I’d thought about blogging for ISSU to keep the members in touch but look it; 6 months in and I’m only starting; well better late then never!There’s a lot fuss right now about this new junior cycle! A lot of negative and unnecessary fuss that is; and a significant amount of necessary concerns! I’m listening to these concerns, as is all of the ISSU Executive, but as the leader of this union representing second-level students on issues concerning them and as an activist with a responsibility to look out for student’s best interests; I feel it’s my job to do my job and fight for what’s best for us and for the future of secondary education in Ireland; that’s why we’re supporting JCSA.Teachers have concerns, and they’re right to on a number of grounds; I see their points but we as students have points too!JCSA originated from dissatisfaction with the old Junior Cert! Rote Learning, lack of “real life skills” after the course, and quite an unfair system overall! So students, parents and even teachers made sure this was heard; they made sure the Government and the NCCA in particular realised Junior Cert wasn’t working!Young People made all sorts of great reccomendations such as reforming the Junior Cycle to first and 2nd year and moving TY to 3rd year, and investing in it more to make it more affordable for families, and then extend the big bold stresses of the Leaving Cert to 3 years so as to reduce the horrible cramming that associates itself with final assessment!So, the government somewhat listened and somewhat didn’t , but they compromised and came up with the new Junior Cycle System which instead of giving you a giant list of stuff to know, it gives you a list of 24 skills you should possess and utilize. Click here to see these 24 Statements of Learning and Key Aspects of Junior Cycle.So, you get it; Opinions heard and Reform comes along!But, then we’ve got this nasty “continuous self assessment” and all of a sudden you think; Teachers marking my work? Marking my brothers work? Bad idea! What if he doesn’t like me and gives me a bad grade! Well now, if that’s the case then I think it’s teachers that need reform instead of our education system; as teachers should assess their students with professional experience , skill and due manner and not give anyone priority, as that would be unprofessional and that would damage education’s progression.Students are getting the wrong perspective on Junior Cycle reform, it’s not flawless, there’s some level of changes required! But don’t mind the rumours that say theres no curriculum and that favouritism will take over; because to that I answer with that two facts instead of two rumours; Schools and their assesments methods will be inspected regularly, and yes there is a curriculum and it’s much better than the original Junior Cert! Imagine this; you leave the Junior Cycle not thinking “Well that was stressful and a waste , suppose I’m ready for Leaving Cert now!” – Sorry, fellows your not, the leaving cert is rather different ! Instead you leave with instead of a stepping stone to further assesement i.e the Leaving Cert you leave with a stepping stone in your education, you leave with skills and abilities to learn and question the world around you.Students don’t need 2 lumps of stress, one at 14 and 15 and another at 17 and 18, they need education! The stress and uneccessary elements that once accompanied our Junior Cert are irrelevant and backwards, the approach the new JSCA brings us forward and I want to ask all our supporters as students to reflect on the Junior Cert and what it thought you, or more to the point what it didn’t teach you.Education isn’t about going from one exam to the other, it’s about learning!I’d encourage ye all to make your own choices and stances on this, but as an individual once opposed to these reforms I’d highly advise ye take a look at our Junior Cycle Student Perspective Document as put together by our Education Officer ; Joanna Siewerska.Wishing ye all the best,Craig McHugh,President
Be Heard! Student’s it’s time to get signed up to vote
With a referendum on Voting @ 16 just around the corner, now is the time to get out and have young peoples opinions heard loud and clear! If you are 18 now, or will be 18 before February 15th you will have the opportunity and right to vote in next year’s upcoming referenda on everything from Marriage Equality to ensuring Gender Equality takes shape in the future of Ireland!Students and young people often are only considered as advisors; but with the prospect of a lower voting age and a high turnout of young people across Europe in recent elections and referenda, that’s all changing; Young People are having a big impact on the way their country is run! Studies show that Young People, when they get signed up and engaged in the discussions at hand, get out and vote! And the best part is, they vote in a progressive manner that tends to move the country towards more positive decisions!The bigger the turnout of young people in this referenda, the more positive the campaign for Vote@16 will become! Everyone deserves a say in democracy, including you! For example, young people are the driving force of the Marriage Equality campaign , and it will take more than convincing conservative minded people to support the changing of the meaning of the term ; “marriage”, it will take votes, and plenty of them, and many of them should be people like you and I! I’m not asking you to vote YES and I am not asking you to vote NO, but I am asking you to vote, and November 25th (This Tuesday!!) is your deadline to be heard! So? If your turning 18 before February 15th or already in the stages of early adulthood, now’s your time to make sure your voice is heard!Voting in elections and referenda are what drives this country forward, and you have a say in just what direction we go in! Don’t miss out! So many get caught at the last minute, and go to apply for the register a week before polling and find they can’t use their democratic right to have a say in issues concerning them. As a student activist, a secondary student, and a fellow young person who turns 18 this February, I want you to join me and thousands of other new voters in moving this country in our direction, because getting young voters out means giving young people a say in their Ireland, because after all it’s our generation that’s going to be really involved in the aftermath of this; be it positive or negative; it’s going to affect us; so I say: Let’s be Part of it! Signing Up to vote is so easy and you might be signed up already Click Here to check the register and Here if your not on the register to make sure you are on it in time! Remember you don’t have to be 18 now or before Tuesday to vote next year, once you meet the voting age by February 15th it’s your democratic legal right to have a voice in matters concering you! So get out and get voting, it’s time to be heard!
Address by Craig McHugh, ISSU President at NPCpp conference
[youtube link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDr1IFoNSPU"] Extract from speech made by ISSU President at the National Parent's Council Post-primary annual conference on Saturday November 15th 2014 in the Tullamore Court Hotel, Tullamore, Co. Offaly.
President, Chief Executive, Guests, Friends, and Parents,It’s 3:35 on a Friday afternoon, it’s been a long week of studying, catching up on school work from the days I've missed , and the beauty of JCSA disputes from teachers. It’s been an interesting week. I take my phone out of my pocket and the first sight I'm welcomed with is the news of the ASTI’s decision to strike on December 2nd. The typical student in me thinks – brilliant! Day off! A day to study, it is after-all smack bang in the middle of my exams! I tell some of my friends around me and there delighted , and then it hits home. Teachers, have decided to block one of the greatest reforms in education in Europe in a very long time, because their not satisfied.They’re not satisfied with the absence of rote-learning, the fact they’ll have to re-develop their methods of teaching, and assessment. I empathise on their fears of being pressured by people around them to swing marks in certain students favours but I must pose two points to this1) Act Professional, its your job as a teacher to teach, to educate, to inform. So remember this when your marking us too. Remember its our education. Be professional , ignore those around you, and separate your personal life from your work life. I’d personally favour anonymous examination numbers etc. but for the sake of progression I’m fine to put these to bed for now.2) And secondly, who marks our papers at university? A random lecturer who lives at the other side of the country? I didn’t think so…But its not my job to talk about the teachers, and their views, its not my place and its quite frankly not what I want to take this opportunity in speaking to ye about today. Because quite frankly I see today, and this week In general as a great step in the right direction. Imagine it…students and parents working together…sounds beautiful doesn’t it? But it makes sense? We’ve common interests and common goals and so we should be working together to help each other achieve these matters.Ladies and Gentlemen, Is mise Craig McHugh, Ta me seacht deag mbliana daois agus ta me ag freastail scoil I Colaiste RIs I nDún Dalgan!Im currently the President of the Irish Second-Level Students' Union, the national umbrella body for student councils in Ireland, and really any secondary student in Ireland for that matter. We represent student voice on matters concerning students and were a relatively new, and small organization, having been founded in 2008 and taking off in 2012. We’re growing by the day and over the next 5 months will be campaigning on a number of topics such as vote at 16, Equality for LGBT Students, the pressures of the leaving cert and proudly supporting the JCSA – Junior Cycle Student Award. So, today as a student, a son, a child, as a school student union activist, and as a fellow partner in education I want to talk to ye about JCSA . I want to tell you why I like it, why students like it, why its good for me and the incredible effect it will have on the future development of this country.The JCSA has been bombarded with negativity ever since the word go. Up until now, the public image of this reform has been no more than ; “Teachers don’t like it, their striking, this isn’t good for the kids, and I don’t want my daughter’s exams to be graded by someone who lives down the road for me.”But what if I challenged this generalised, media driven opinion? What if I laid out the facts? And what if, what if maybe a student who’s been through the current Junior Cert System had his say! Well then, it would go a little like this.The JCSA is all about skills. It’s all about equipping students with the ability to work with people, work with situations and develop real life skills. It doesn’t abandon the entire curriculum but instead adds to it, what it adds is quite simple; real education. Before I start off I wish to make a solid point; Teachers don’t have it easy. Teaching is difficult, complicated and unfortunately carries with it a confused appearance of wealth, and long summer holidays, I can assure you it’s not all as lovely as it sounds. ISSU and the NpcPP are Pro-JCSA but this does not and never will mean we will devalue the opinions of teachers and their unions. We merely ask they reflect on why they joined the teaching profession; was it to educate and foster the minds of young people or was it to play to the negative stereotypes of long summer holidays and public sector pay that so many harp on about? I’ve sat 12 Junior Cert Papers. 3 Ordinary. 1 Common Level. And 8 Higher Levels. What I remember from those 3 years of school can be shortened in to a sentence; I learned what I was supposed to learn so I could pass my exam, not what I needed to learn and not what I should have learned. I left the Junior Cycle system in 2012 not knowing where Bosnia and Herczegovina or Kosovo was (a rather embarrassing situation to find yourself in at an international conference) I left English with little or no Public Speaking skills and turned entirely away from the Personal Writing section, because they didn’t appreciate my imagination; I left Maths knowing how to solve Quadratic Trinomials up until the final paper, but not knowing how to solve problems outside of them. I left Junior Cycle with a suppressed imagination, and generally disappointed that I wasn’t educated merely just part of an assembly line. I felt unjust and somehow angry. But what made me angry most, was the pressure that was placed upon me to excel. My parents, fortunately are more “Do your Best” approach kind of people, so it wasn’t impressing my parents I was being bogged down by, but more the workload. The Junior Cert culminates three years of work performed by a student aged between 12 and 15 into 1 day of exam or exams. With no attention being placed on the vigorous effort put in by many students over the course of the cycle, a student aged 15 is expected to remember 3 years worth of information and material into one exam. Can someone please explain to me how this is meant to be a fair representation and marking of not just a students work but also their potential to excel in this subject in the future? I want to briefly touch on this fear that teachers have, and I also wish to empathize with them too, I respect their opinions but I do hope they respect their students and fellow partners in education too; the entire idealogy around teachers marking their own students or local student’s exams does on the surface sound terrifying to some? But what if we looked at the future? What if we recognised the fact that teacher-student assessment isn’t as bad as it sounds? For example, who grades the papers in college? An anonymous examiner? If teachers, grade their students professionally as should be done all year around regardless of the education system we serve under; Junior Cert or JCSA , there should be no problem in this area whatsoever. I wish to re-iterate the fact that real education is not present when rote-learning is too. Rote-Learning is all about learning answers off word for word, Irish Essays being testament to this. I can clearly remember friends of mine , performing better in their Irish Christmas exams because they learned a few essays off word for word, while I was blessed with an Irish teacher who thought me Irish and not just the ability to regurgitate information, it didn’t reflect like this when it came to assessment . I recently attended a JCSA Science Consultation Event, another step I value highly, the NCCA’s willingness and want for student voice in this dramatic reform of education; I entered the event feeling like I was the wrong kind of student to be there; but soon realised I wasn’t. I realised I like many lost interest out of science because I wasn’t being engaged properly, I wasn’t being shown the relationship between curriculum and the real world.The Junior Cert revolved around and became a slave to a set curriculum, the JCSA provides schools with the freedoms to introduce exciting new modules that will encourage creativity and spark greater interests in all aspects of education, including subjects never before assessed at this level such as Information Communications Technology (ICT). The JCSA allows and encourages students to challenge the ideologies of the real world and therefore think on their toes in situations relative to them as students and future key players in this society.I, as a school student activist, second level student, son of 2 parents and brother of a JCSA English Student (of whom I share great jealousy of) realise the importance of education. Education is the key to a strong minded, better equipped lifestyle and livelihood. Education should not be focused on moving on from one stage to another, but more how and why your moving on, and allow you to challenge the aspects of life, so that in the future you can make decisions for yourself. JCSA, I won’t lie isn’t flawless, I have my concerns, as we all do, but I’ve put them to bed for the sake of progression and the re-evaluation of the morale of education, because I believe JCSA is exactly what this country needs, and what this country’s future deserves.Ireland has a highly educated workforce, but I see in the future Ireland having a highly educated, creative and proactive workforce. The opportunities of personal development JCSA offers to students is incredible and I’d like to once again call on individuals to look into the logistics of what this reform is all about, because I can assure you it’s not all as scary and negative as it seems.Parents want change, students want change and I know teachers do too, it’s merely a matter of whether or not their willing to sacrifice those they worked so hard to serve just out of stubbornness to reform.I am delighted to be supporting the JCSA alongside the NpcPP and would love to see all partners in education do the same.Education should foster the minds of young people and provide them with the ability to function and work in the real world, the JCSA does just that. The legendary Don Myers asked me if the JCSA inspires…and I answer to you now Don, yes it does! It Inspires students to think, it prepares them for the real world and gets them interested in whats to come in the future. This education system has incredible potential, the reform for Junior cycle is only the beginning of what I believe to be an excellent era of reform and rejuvenation for educating the future of Ireland!Students deserve better, parents deserve better bang for their buck when it comes to paying for the expenses of 13 years in school but overall this country deserves a much greater system of education so we’re ready for the future! The world Is changing every day. Technology takes a greater role in our lives every day. But we mustn’t lose sight of the basis that education is built on, skills. As society evolves, education must evolve around it. We as students and ye as the parents need unfortunately cant strike , but we can use our voices and our voices will be heard! JCSA is good for this country, its great for parents and its even greater for students, but it is society as a whole that will benefit the most from the re-delevopment and the attention that is now being paid to the moral of education. Its time education received the priority of which it deserves and is allowed progress into the future. We , as a country, as a society, and us in particular as partners and influential individuals in the development of education have a role here ; we need to make sure JCSA becomes a reality for our sake as students for your sake as parents and for society’s sake to ensure this country moves on with the rest of the world! Its time Ireland started catching up in the education spectrum! Thank you all so much for your time in allowing me to speak. Myself and Joanna Siewerska , the ISSU education officer will be here for the remainder of today and this evening, and would be happy to talk to ye about anything. We’re also on a big membership drive in an effort to become even more representative so if you’ve any suggestions for us on how we can represent students better, pop over to us, because we don’t bite! Thank you all so much, thank you to the NPCpp for having us here today, and to Don Myers who’s been so kind to us and issu over the past few months with everything from support to advice, you really have helped us along the way and it’s a pleasure to be working with you. I’ll leave ye all now with a quote from William Deresiewicz – “The purpose of education is to make minds…not careers!” Thank you all , and enjoy the rest of the conference!
STUDENTS SCAPEGOATED... again
Press Statement
ISSU speaks out in opposition to using students as pawns in industrial dispute
Teachers are often too slow to embrace significant change, and on this occasion they have brought reasonable talks to a deadlock due to a failure to adapt. Teachers correct hundreds of school-based assessments for individual subject exams or indeed for in-house Christmas and summer exams. We would recommend that the anonymity attached to exam numbers provided by the State Examinations Commission be maintained, and that teachers swap exam scripts within the same school to address concerns over bias. This change is needed and we need to move with it.Joanna Siewierska, ISSU Education Officer, said “We are lucky to have some of the most dedicated and committed teachers teaching us, but once again industrial action on this scale during school hours means that students are being used as pawns in what ultimately is an industrial dispute not solely concerning educational reform. My teachers correct my Christmas and summer exams during the school year and when it comes to the award of the new JCSA, why is correcting these papers any different? We respectably ask teachers to refrain from industrial action in this manner and return to talks with the Minister for Education and Skills”.*** ENDS *** Contact: 01-443 4461 / communications@issu.ie