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DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL has taken a number of precautionary measures to protect against possible flooding overnight.
Met Éireann has issued a weather warning in the capital for the next 30 hours. The weather people said some local flooding from rain is possible, while coastal flooding also remains a threat.
Between 1am Wednesday and 1.30am Thursday, there will be three very high tides in-a-r0w. Following a meeting of the council’s flooding assessment group, a number of precautionary actions have been taken.
The Liffey Boardwalk defences will be closed tomorrow morning.
The car parks at Sandymount promenade and at Clontarf will be closed tonight as there may be very localised wave overtopping in the areas.
The flood defences on the River Tolka are being put in place and drainage crews are being mobilised.
The flood gates on the River Dodder have already been closed. Dublin City Council maintains a stock of sandbags at various locations for strategic purposes and will be deployed by drainage staff, if required.
Met Eireann predicts widespread rain for a time tonight with “some very heavy falls in places.
“It will become windy in coastal areas too, and there is a danger of some flooding, especially in coastal counties of the south and southeast.”
Some heavy showers and thundery downpours are expected tomorrow with “coastal gales at times in the east and southeast, with an ongoing risk of flooding in these counties”.
And there doesn’t seem to be much of a let-off later in the week. Although Friday will be more dry and bright, there will be “the odd shower”, while the weekend “looks like it will be unsettled with rain at times”.
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It hasn’t worked awfully well in the UK; league “position” has ended up being the primary driver for the school rather than the educational needs of individual students. low scoring students with behavioural issue tend to find themselves expelled very quickly, entrance exams to higher ranked schools have become more common due to over subscription, leaving the lower ranked schools on a downward spiral of falling results and falling enrolment.
Progress of students relative to their abilities indicates the quality of the education; a bad teacher in a good school is still a bad teacher.
@ Padraig – Just in relation to low scoring students with behavioural issues getting expelled very quickly – Does this not make sense, if not expelled at least isolated? I’ve seen first hand how one or two trouble makers can essentially ruin an entire class, it’s the very reason that within a school after a certain point classes are split between honours/pass etc. If the school realises that these pupils are dragging down the entire schools reputation then I say it’s a positive step. I don’t buy into the whole PC brigade where everyone should be treated the same no matter what they do, if 24 kids in a class want to learn and engage with a teacher to try and do as well as they can why should one delinquent in the class hold everyone back.
Absolutely disgusting.
Should we also ‘isolate’ the kids with dyspraxia, dyslexia, Asperger’s, NSLD, kids from wretched backgrounds who didn’t get a breakfast, have had a sugary lunch and not surprisingly find it hard to learn and remain placid in the classroom? Like we did in the 1950s? To maintain our standardised performance?
In our school we have a student with Down’s Syndrome. His presence and lack of A grades is certainly going to mess with the teachers’ and school’s performance. Out with him?
An incredibly short-sighted and dated article and even more so the replies.
@irlanda @ted I think both of you have valid points, and therein lies the rub. Students with educational needs that cannot be effectively provided for within the day-to-day curriculum should have access to the specialist teaching that they need. I wouldn’t call it isolating them through. This isn’t excluding them for negative reasons, and should only apply in the curriculum areas required. Inclusiveness is a positive until its to the detriment of the majority, and especially when it’s to the detriment of those it is intending to help
My point re expelling disruptive children was that it was happening in increased numbers to protect the league position of the schools, not for student welfare reasons; the upshot is poor performing (which are often undersubscribed because of this) end up taking expelled students, further lowering the schools performance etc
One disruptive pupil can mess up the educational success of a whole class.
Clearly you don’t understand that children should not and can not be measured like raw data files…there are too many variables in theirs lives that cannot be evaluated.
Exactly. How could sporting achievement be measured? How about the kids who do well just to pass. School isn’t about numbers; it’s about human beings. Another example of following the wonderful English system
Another way to bully kids…..imagine your school near the bottom but the school down the road just one place above you….I can hear the cat calling already.
Nobody is suggesting measuring kids.
Qualified, accurate information on a school’s ability to teach, along with explanations for the factors impacting it, would be extremely useful.
Besides, this article is not centred on measuring schools. It’s centred on the unexplained difference in policy regarding schools & doctors.
Bullish”t – my wife has taught in Deis band 1 for years. Was principal of one of the ten poorest schools in the country where most pupils were in the bottom decile in reading and maths but it was a happy and thriving school and learning environment. She is now a principal in a rural school with kids from all backgrounds and a number of kids on the autistic spectrum.
There is a lot to be said for the concept that every gets an A. A kid with dyslexia getting a D in standardised tests may be putting in a stellar performance. That is why my wife refuses to cook the books and exclude kids with English as a second language or learning problems. The school is a community and communities do best when they stick by each other and take care of their own. It’s not a road I’d lime to see Ireland take.
I salute your wife! The principal of our school is like her, and the word gets around among parents of kids with special needs that they will be well taken care of. As a result there is quite a few such kids in the school. No need to guess how will that influence any league tables performance.
You cannot compare like with like here. Everyone can go to the Mater, St Lukes Kilkenny, Waterford regional hospitals but who can afford to go to Clongowes Wood boarding school or Glenstal Abbey? You want to match teachers there against teachers let’s say in an inner city area? And try and see if they are doing a good enough job? It would segregate Ireland further.
I agree with you Libby,but there has to be some way of grading teachers there’s a lot of (1) sh!te teachers that aren’t cut out to teach.(2) teachers who don’t care or interest in their work(3)teachers that are to old to teach that aren’t really “with it” still teaching.i know most teachers do a great job and and care about their job.but in my school days I came across a lot of all 3above
And before any teacher starts correcting my grammar I know it’s not great and I don’t care
There’s no point. A teacher cannot be sacked.
The problem is that this seems easy and logical in theory, but in practice it’s not that easy. One year a teacher may get a class with 10% As, 40%Bs and be delighted with the results as the students showed massive progression.. The next year with the same results they might be hugely disappointed as some of the students were capable of more than they achieved.
All very well saying that it is measurable, but I don’t see any new or innovative ways proposed in the above article.
One teacher who was considered one of the best literally gave us reams of essays and lines to learn off. Sure it got results, but it didn’t give any of us a love our passion for the subject. Other teachers who were inspiring, giving us additional reading from outside the standard examples & finding interesting videos to illustrate a point were frequently criticised for “waffling” and going off the point .. ie. Don’t make me think, just give me the lines I need to get through my exams.
League tables are a disaster in education. They create huge problems just like the doctor you say won’t take on a certain patient you have teachers taking the nicer classes and fobbing off others with the tougher classes, creating competition in a staff room where you are supposed to be a team. Leads to corruption within schools amd depratments as to how to divvy up the year group. Don’t get on with the boss? The uead can now give you classes that will destroy your track record and possibly career. Destroys morale by putting teacjers against each other and creating competition between schools in rougher areas where cooperation should be the the most important thing schools work against each other meaning troubled kids get left out. Nobody wants them in their school or class because they’ll ruin their precious value added. This leads to a dealing with kids as products mentality which is wrong and very unhealthy for kids especially the bottom end who nobody now wants to teach. The scheme you’ve dreamt up becomes an expensive behemoth to run, creating and maintaining numbers for every kid on the country, teachers and schools are forced into worrying aboit these numbers rather than the children they represent. Who gives these numbers to the kids? At least fifty other reasons too, do some research, the simplicity and ignorance of your arguments are exactly the fault you find with these politicians.
I don’t agree with league tables for lots of reasons and I have a problem with the ‘progression’ tables that will be published showing who went to what university. The information is too limited and doesn’t encompass the breadth of student expectation and ability.
They won’t just affect the teacher whose results are published but the students. You’d be surprised and saddened to hear kids talk about how they’re stupid and in ‘the stupid class’. I think the publication of this data could reinforce those types of ideas.
Also, for schools who have done well with special needs and have attracted greater numbers of these students the data would be difficult to align with student experience.
Education league tables would be sorta like parenting league tables, just because the kid got into Trinity (or wherever) doesn’t mean you did a great job. Most decent teachers, like most decent parents aren’t aiming for an arbitrary absolute definition of success for children but for success based on what is best for the particular child in front of them.
James Reilly reminds me of Dr. Kelso from Scrubs. Utterly clueless and in need of a good hiding.
Not a like for like situation. A teacher’s results are based on the relationship they have with their students while a doctor’s results are based entirely on them and have nothing to do with the patient. A doctor’s ability does not depend at all on the patient while a teacher’s ability depends entirely on the student or students they have.
That’s a bit simple. A doctor operates in complete isolation from the world??
Surely the patient makes a lot of difference, maybe if they smoke, drink too much, have poor/no social supports – these all make a difference to outcomes. Some people don’t have the money or education or understanding to take their medication – a doctor can’t wave their magic wand and make all things equal.
Another issue is the quality of a hospital – a patient’s care is complicated, and there’s probably tens of doctors and nurses involved in ensuring outcomes. Availability of theatre time, scans, speed of tests all make a difference – all out of a doctor’s control.
So a doctors performance has nothing to do with wether or not the patient takes the medication when they go home? Nothing to do with a patient coming in early when they notice signs or symptoms compared until waiting till the last minute?
Rubbish, a doctors performance has everything to do with the patient. You cannot expect a respiratory specialist to have as good a performance as the general paediatric specialist.
League tables in general are bad – generally playing to a populist audience, which I most certainly do not agree with.
It would do Reilly and us better if he’d try to sort out the “waiting list” problem.
My GP referred me for to have a hearing test in April 2011 last week I recieved a letter from the Audiology Section of the HSE asking me would “like to validate the referral”! After 27 months and THATS how close I am to having a hearing test!
James Reilly and the nonsense he induldges in is a joke. He and his Boss Enda seem to be very fond of “Report Cards” The shame is they rate themselves too highly for doing a rotten job.
But thats ok we’ll get OUR chance to mark THEIR cards next year in the European and Local Elections. Then hopefully in the next GE they will be banished from our political landscape. They are the worst bunch of callous and cruel gits this country has ever had to suffer. So Reilly give up your games of smoke and mirrors and do the job we are paying you to do.
From my experience working in a school in the UK, league tables do more harm than good, both to students and teachers. Students are told what grade they should be achieving, and if they are not getting to that grade, due to lack of effort or ability, enormous pressure is placed on the teacher to get them there. From what I have seen, the heads of schools and heads of departments are pushing teachers to inflate student’s grades so that the school looks good on paper. No child is not allowed to achieve at least a C, regardless of ability or whether or not they actually have. It’s destroying education in the UK, the lives of students who need support more than most, and most disappointingly for me, the souls of good teachers.
The ruling classes love it when the working class push the agenda they want … well done!
League tables would not be necessary if the government depts responsible for their oversight actually did their jobs. Parents and patients alike would not call out for transparency if they saw that nonperforming or incompetent doctors and teachers were sanctioned, given the opportunity to retrain or ultimately dismissed.
Sorry I have no problem with a healthy discussion on this topic (even though I am strongly against league tables) but it surely cannot constitute weighty journalism to reference an OECD report that you link to where the link is to your blog that itself admits to not being able to find the OECD report?? Worse, as an academic, you would not stand for it from one of your undergrads!
And just re the blog entry and this article, there is public information about schools – all MMLs and WSE are published on the dept website. Incidentally Finland does not publish league tables and there’s a huge academic backlash in Australia against states that publish them.
Well I never claimed it was ” weighty journalism” whatever that means. The OECD reference was completely incidental but I thought it might be of some interest. Apparently not. Personally, I judge students work very differently from journalism and, indeed, undergrads very differently from post-grads etc. What do you do?
If you read my article you will see I was not advocating one particular policy or another. I was commenting on the inconsistency of two approaches and a possible way forward.
When the Department of Ed surveyed parents, I think 80% said they wanted to see the school exam results. Note that providing this does not exclude providing other information e.g. On sports, student satisfaction, etc. they are complements not substitutes .
I may judge different work to different standards but if I publish in a national news digest with my name on it, I make sure my links link to credible sources and not just my blog claiming through a third source to have read a report.
You do advocate the merits of a shift in policy so yes you do advocate a new policy.
And I’ve no problem acknowledging that parents may want this but that’s not an argument in and of itself. I wonder how many of those parents know that the dept already publishes reports on schools.
I think the majority of parents check out schools before the send their kids to them to see which one suits their kids all schools have that give a lot more than others and also some …I know I didn’t send my kids to the nearest school because they were handy I checked them out and picked schools that would give the best all round education …
The standardised tests in primary schools are a measure of natural intelligence not of what has been developed in class over the years. Shove league tables as far as you can up your backside. They are negative on everyone and on communities, the only “benefit”out of them is that the government can smirk away at them and use them as some sort of evidence.. Look at how they use them in England and it works well.. Oh no, wait, hold on now, they don’t… Ridiculous article just trying to stir it up
Id like to see a list of cesarean vrs natural births from all hospitals in Ireland. Castlebar hospital wouldnt, thats for sure.
here’s some of that data
http://www.esri.ie/publications/latest_publications/view/?id=2822
http://www.imt.ie/news/latest-news/2013/05/mothers-should-receive-counselling-on-c-section.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14653377
I would doubt if Castlebar had the highest rates however, but perhaps doctors might do more c-sections because they’re a 3 hour ambulance ride away from an neonatal icu and want to absolutely minimise the chance of a harm to a baby
From personal expreience, i and many dont think so. Im waiting for this story to break.
Economists should stick to economics. Despite what they think education does not follow market forces rules, only the wealthy think it does.
Agreed
The thing is that the kind of information parents may really want – such as approaches to learning, statistics on student satisfaction with their learning experience, disciplinary approach, etc. are not available! Purely looking at exam results is so very much the lowest common denominator – it is where our education system is going wrong.
Is it fair to grade rank childrens performance like this? Its unfair the kids in the other school are smarter than others. There should a better way to review teachers performance instead of childrens
There is….it’s called the inspectorate. They randomly arrive in schools and watch teachers teach.
have your say