Sir, –Having spent more than three decades teaching and assessing undergraduate and postgraduate education students in various higher education institutions, nationally and internationally, as well as being in the role of external examiner for such programmes, what remains to overcome the current stand-off is to work out more precisely the details of the reforms. In so doing, the challenge to the educational leadership on all sides is to harness, as well as to enhance, the professionalism of the teaching profession. To delay in doing so is to risk reputational damage to the status of the profession, nationally and internationally. – Yours, etc,
Prof CIARAN SUGRUE,
School of Education,
University College Dublin,
Belfield,
Dublin 4.
Sir, – I would like to dispel the notion that teachers don’t already give students feedback on the progress of their work. I give feedback to my students on a daily basis through homework, projects and portfolio work.
In addition, there are assessments including monthly progress tests, midterm tests, Christmas tests, Easter tests and summer tests.
Teachers want to be advocates rather than judges of their students and have become even more protective of them in light of cutbacks to the guidance counsellor allocation to schools and special education needs resources, which have predominantly affected the most vulnerable students in our schools. – Yours, etc,
ENDA WHELTON,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.