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TUI members vote to accept senior cycle redevelopment measures

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Maeve McTaggart

Members of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) have voted by a margin of 73pc to 27pc to accept negotiated implementation measures for senior cycle redevelopment.

The union’s executive committee had recommended acceptance as it believed the measures were the best that could be achieved through negotiations.

The TUI said in a statement that it made it clear “at all times” that the ballot was on the implementation measures and not the curriculum itself, which the Education Minister has the power to prescribe under the Education Act “and which other stakeholders have no veto over”.

TUI president David Waters said it is clear that members “still have a range of concerns around various issues related to the redevelopment process, and we will be insisting that the Department honours the commitments set out in the negotiated document”.

"We have specific concerns about the system capacity for the roll-out of the science subjects in schools that have been chronically under-resourced, the potential risks to assessment posed by AI and the additional resourcing required to ensure that no students, particularly those in DEIS settings, are put at a disadvantage by any of the changes. It is now imperative that these and any other arising issues are urgently addressed.”

The union had called for a delay in the implementation of the revised Trance 2 subjects of English and accounting ahead of recent negotiations that led to the publication of the Senior Cycle Implementation Measures document.

It stated that the Department will “continue to engage regularly with the NCCA on the delivery timelines” of Tranche 2-5 subjects and “where considered appropriate and necessary for development and/or implementation reasons, the implementation of individual subjects may be delayed from the current published schedule.”

The union added that it “once again drew attention to Ireland’s shamefully low level of investment in education, which sees us spend a lower percentage of national wealth on education than any other listed OECD country”.

"The education budget for 2026 will need to increase significantly to properly facilitate such significant change.”