Second-level teachers are to consider calls for escalating industrial action in the autumn to secure a 6 per cent pay rise to compensate for losses in earning power over recent years.
The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) warned that larger pay increases may be sought if inflation continues to rise as a result of the war in the Gulf and Middle East.
Delegates at the union’s annual conference, which takes place next week in Wexford, will consider a motion to add 6 per cent to all levels of pay scales to offset “real decreases” they maintain they have experienced in terms of earning power since 2015.
The motion suggests escalating industrial action from September to pursue these increases.
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However, union secretary general Kieran Christie said this proposal was initially submitted last November, well in advance of the rise in prices brought about by the ongoing war in the Middle East.
He said “if inflation rockets, that motion may look conservative” and emergency motions around pay could come up at the conference.
Another motion due to be debated at next week’s conference will demand that wage rises for teachers must match increases in the cost of living.
The current overall public service pay deal, negotiated between the Government and the Public Services Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, expires in May.
Christie said if a motion passed at the conference seemed “surprisingly moderate” in light of events or rises in the cost of living in the meantime, the union’s executive could step in later and revise any pay demand.
The ASTI said members remain concerned at the rolling out of new Leaving Cert reforms and in particular at the potential impact of the use of AI tools on projects required in the senior cycle.
It said an overwhelming majority of its members who teach Leaving Cert subjects with new additional assessment components (AACs) expected difficulties to arise in verifying that the work submitted has been completed solely by students.
At a press conference on Tuesday in advance of the union’s annual conference, ASTI assistant general secretary John Conneely said teachers believed that AI plagiarism and outside assistance “creates a serious problem”.
The ASTI said students sitting the Leaving Cert next year will complete an AAC worth at least 40 per cent of their final grade in nine new and revised subjects as part of the senior cycle redevelopment programme. These include business, biology, chemistry and physics.
The union said the nature of AACs varied across subjects, but could involve students writing and submitting a report based on a project or research they had undertaken.
The union said a survey of nearly 1,600 ASTI members found a high level of concern around AI having changed the practical meaning of what constituted “student work”. It said teachers believed that written reports and extended coursework tasks could be produced, improved or fully generated using AI, making it extremely difficult to treat such submissions as reliable evidence of individual attainment.
“Many responses explicitly refer to plagiarism, cheating, fabricated results and the practical impossibility of detecting AI use with confidence in a high-stakes context,” the union said.
Christie said there was a clear message coming from teachers. He said they believed the job “has become significantly more demanding and without meaningful change, this is not sustainable either for teachers or for the quality of education that students receive”.
“There is a strong sense that the pace of change in education has outstripped the capacity of schools and teachers to absorb it effectively,” he said.
