The Minister for Education and Skills, Jan O’Sullivan, has told media outlets that new Junior Cert reforms will go ahead and the Dept of Education will ‘move forward’ on the recent proposals despite the non-co-operation of the teacher unions.

The Minister said that she hopes the teacher unions will engage, and is willing to go over the new proposals again, but there would be no new negotiations. She told RTE News today that her department will not need union agreement to continue.

According to RTE’s News One, when asked if Minister would impose disciplinary sanctions on teachers who refused to partake in the reform, she responded that she would, "consider what needs to be done if it comes to that".

According to the RTE report:

‘She said the reforms on the table were now different to those that teachers had mandated their unions to oppose. She said she had not seen "one step of movement" from the unions in relation to assessment and she believed "the ball was now in their court. She also said she believed there were a significant number of teachers that wanted to move forward.’

Her remarks come as teacher unions, ASTI and TUI failed to accept recent changes to the Junior Cert proposals. The two unions have rejected new changes but said they will not proceed with a strike day but will keep ‘their industrial action under review.’

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