INTO criticises planned literacy tests for pupils
The Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) has criticised the Government’s plans to introduce literacy and numeracy tests for primary school students at various stages of their education.
INTO general secretary John Carr accused Education Minister Noel Dempsey of treating teachers with contempt by not consulting them about the plans.
He said the planned tests were a waste of resources and were unfair on children and any attempt to use them to evaluate the performance of individual schools would be opposed by the INTO.
“National testing won’t raise standards,” Mr Carr said. “It’s time-consuming, it’s expensive and it’s wasteful of resources. It labels young children and it won’t tell teachers anything they don’t already know.
"We are now about to label four-year-olds, seven-year-olds and 11-year-olds as failures, particularly those with special needs in our schools, and any system that does that is wrong.
"Any attempt to aggregate or to create a system whereby schools would be evaluated on the basis of test results will be vehemently opposed by the INTO and we will take any action that’s necessary in order to protect the relationship between teacher and child and parent within a school.”
