Teachers to strike on thursday

 More than 13,000 students across 20 post-primary schools in Meath will be staying at home on Thursday as the ASTI and TUI take their second day of industrial action in just over a month.
Schools will close around the county as the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) and Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) take strike action.
Pickets are expected to be mounted on schools as teachers protest over proposals for the Junior Cert reforms. A previous day of action took place in December.
The unions say they were taking the action to defend the integrity of the education system in this country.
According to the unions, teachers have serious concerns about marking their own students for State exams, but they were entirely supportive of other reforms.
They said the State Exams Commission currently does a great job in terms of transparency and fairness, but a school-based assessment leaves the door open to inequality and unfairness, even the risk of corruption seeping in.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Louth Meath Education and Training Board (LMETB) Cllr, Nick Killian, said the teachers’ strike would primarily hurt students, particularly Leaving and Junior Cert students.
“I would call on both the teacher unions and the Department of Education to immediately agree to reopen talks to iron out the differences.
“A compromise has to be found eventually so I am calling on all sides to get back into negotiations. I’m urging them to sort it out so as not to cause any more angst to students, particularly those doing exams,” he said.