secondary school teachers doing orals

seantheman

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Just looking for views and opinions on the following
My son is doing honours maths and french for the Leaving Cert, in the past couple of weeks he has been without classes in these subjects as his teachers have been off at neighbouring schools doing oral exams.
Arising from the above, the teachers concerned probably get full salary and extra pay/allowances for the orals. Firstly, couldn't newly retired teachers not form a panel for the orals? If not, shouldn't the current teachers doing the orals only get paid 'extra' as regards mileage to and from the exam centre because they are already getting paid salary for the day's work?.....Discuss, as me aul master used to say
 
Seems a bit ridiculous alright - what does your son's class do during those periods

Just something else to add to the list of things that could/should be done better with a bit of lateral thinking
 
it does seem ridiculous that they may be getting paid extra for doing extra work during normal hours.

What contingencies were put in place because these teachers were not able to give the class? Was there work left behind for the class to do?
How many classes has your son actual missed?

I would say all conscientious teachers do not like missing exam classes especially not this time of year.
 
my daughter did her orals in irish and spanish there about two weeks ago.. seems to have been off early nearly everday since.. some days they were sent home as only 4 in the class! dont understand why they cant take a class even if only 4 pupils there, surely thats better for the child..days musical exams on they were sent home early also.
 
Have you brought this up with the school? Find out who are the parents nominees on the Board of Management and talk to them.
 
Current teachers wouldn't do the orals if they were not getting paid extra. Retired teachers shouldn't be hired. The exam curriculum should be well covered by April, its all repetition and revision by then.
 
Teacher gets paid to do orals during class time after Easter break.

Sub gets hired.

Cost to State:

(1) teacher's normal wage
(2) fee + mileage to go to other school to do the oral
(3) cost to hire sub for the day(s)

MADNESS.

Why not hold the oral exams during Easter week, so saving the interruption to classes and the costs of the sub?
 
Have you brought this up with the school? Find out who are the parents nominees on the Board of Management and talk to them.

Principal and Board of Mgt are not the "boss" of the teacher, not like in private sector.

DES sets date of orals.

I presume Principal / BoM can't stop the teacher leaving.

Unions too powerful.

Orals should be held during Easter week, same fees / mileage paid to teacher, but no interruption of classes, no cost of sub.

Need strong Govt to dictate, not negotiate.
 
Principal and Board of Mgt are not the "boss" of the teacher, not like in private sector.
Actually, they are. The BoM is the employer of the teacher, even though the Dept Education pays the salaries. This is how the Dept managed to avoid liability for abuse carried out by teachers, in the past.

I guess that many teachers would cringe slightly at the reference to 'unions too powerful' given the series of attacks on their terms and conditions that have gone through in recent years. But regardless, unless there is something in the teacher's contract that allows them to take absence, they should be in their own school teaching.

It is certainly worth raising this at BoM level. It's also worth checking out whether this school benefits from 'incoming' teachers from other schools to do orals. If it's just a swapping of resources between schools with no net gain for teachers or schools, then that would be understandable.
 
Don't forget that some people work in the VEC sector and the BoM is not an employer in this sector.

Marion
 
The students would not be too impressed with your suggestion of no Easter Orals eating into their Easter study plans.
Seems odd that you could be paid twice for working the same week, but I wouldn't be so sure that is infact the case, is it actually true?, I noted the OP said probably,

Teacher bashing seems to be a public bloodsport these days. I wonder why other areas of front line services are not equally open to a good bash? Garda overtime, on call rates for firemen etc ? For what teachers do I honestly don't think they are paid in excess, that is if they are indeed all doing what they should be doing.
 
Sorry guy's been outa action for a while. On reread i wasn't very clear on how this panned out, Around four weeks ago his French teacher went to local schools to do their orals and he missed four French lessons,then two weeks ago the Irish teacher missed five lessons at school by doing orals again.Both teachers left classwork for them to get on with supervised by sub teacher.
Obviously kids have to have leaving orals but i simply never had to think about where the teachers came from until i had a child doing their leaving cert.I also understand that whoever does the orals should have a good connect with the leaving syllabus,but what would be so wrong with asking newly retired (1-3 years) to look after this? God knows there should be plenty in this boat just now.Have many other parents of leaving students seen this happening in their schools,or was my lad just unlucky to have two teachers involved?
 
Do other teachers 'return the favour' by coming into your school to do these orals with your students?
 
I wouldn't exactly actually call it 'returning a favour' but yes,a teacher from a neighbouring school came and did their oral exams
 
I wouldn't exactly actually call it 'returning a favour' but yes,a teacher from a neighbouring school came and did their oral exams

So the school loans some resources, and then gets resources back on loan. It all comes out in the wash. Who do you expect to do the orals with your children, if not teachers on loan from other schools?
 
So the school loans some resources, and then gets resources back on loan. It all comes out in the wash. Who do you expect to do the orals with your children, if not teachers on loan from other schools?

I'll refer you back to my previous posts where you will find your answer
 
I'll refer you back to my previous posts where you will find your answer

So you're suggesting that 'newly retired teachers' be engaged to do the orals - which would be more expensive that using existing teachers. Given that we're living on borrowed money, can we really afford to be paying extra people to do this work at extra cost?
 
So you're suggesting that 'newly retired teachers' be engaged to do the orals - which would be more expensive that using existing teachers.

I'm merely asking the question.Do you know,with any degree of certainty that retired teachers would cost more than current ones?
Are you suggesting that current teachers get no more than their standard salary plus travel costs/expenses for carrying out these tasks?
If so, then i would welcome this cost saving measure
 
I'm merely asking the question.Do you know,with any degree of certainty that retired teachers would cost more than current ones?
Are you suggesting that current teachers get no more than their standard salary plus travel costs/expenses for carrying out these tasks?
If so, then i would welcome this cost saving measure

Maybe you should have checked out the answers to the questions before you jumped to conclusions? For the record, no - I don't know the current situation with any certainly, just like yourself.
 
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