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With a decision on this year’s Leaving Certificate to be made next week, Billy Ryle says the Irish Second Level Students’ Union make a good case to win Leaving Cert exam choice…
The views of the Irish Second Level Students’ Union (ISSU) made a significant impact on last week’s meeting of the exams advisory group, which includes representatives of students, parents, teachers, principals, school managers and the State Examinations Commission (SEC).
The ISSU wants Leaving Cert candidates to be given a choice between calculated grades and sitting the June exams.
The ISSU is representing 120,000 Junior Cycle and Leaving Cert students – about 4,000 from Kerry – at the meetings of the exams advisory group and is emerging as a powerful lobby with very definite policies.
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The ISSU indicated that many students are suffering from stress and lack of motivation and needed clarity on alternative options to the traditional exam.
The ISSU’s internal surveys show that only 4% of students support plans to press ahead with the traditional exam, while a majority wants a choice between calculated grades and exams.
Bilateral meetings between the Department of Education & Skills (DES) and education stakeholders got underway this week to prepare for the traditional Leaving Cert exam and an alternative assessment option.
Discussion about the Junior Cycle exam is also on the agenda for these talks. Whether or not the traditional exam goes ahead will depends on NPHET advice.
If it does go ahead, a greater choice of questions will be offered to students to compensate for the amount of in-school teaching time lost last year and again this year.
The alternative assessment option will be largely based on last year’s system of calculated grades with some new features added.
The agreement of the teachers’ unions, Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) and the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI,) to any alternative assessment option will be crucial, as it will most likely require teachers to assess their students in some form.
The ASTI and TUI are participating in the bilateral meetings and continue to work constructively with all stakeholders to ensure that the traditional exam goes ahead as normally as possible and that an alternative assessment option will be put in place.
Both unions were heroic in stepping up to the plate last year and did all the heavy lifting when the SEC washed its hands of the calculated grades process for fear of legal reprisals.
DES has indicated to the education partners that any alternative assessment option must include a number of features that weren’t available in the calculated grades system of last year.
The most crucial of those is that the SEC will take responsibility for both options this year. Adequate provision will be put in place for non-school-going candidates in any alternative assessment option.
DES is also keen to include marks scored in the additional component elements of the Leaving Cert exam – coursework, orals, practical exams – in any alternative assessment option, but with the schools remaining closed, one wonders will the coursework, orals and practical exams take place at all.
Timely progression to higher and further education must also be provided by both options. A spokesman for DES said discussions will be focused and immediate, with the aim of providing definite information to students as quickly as possible on when and how the exams will be held and details of the alternative assessment option.
The questions that need to be urgently answered are as follows…
Is the traditional Leaving Cert exam going ahead?
What alternative assessment option is the SEC providing for candidates?
Does a candidate have to opt for either the traditional exam or the alternative assessment option or may s/he apply for both?
Must a candidate use the results from either the traditional exam or the alternative assessment option in CAO points accumulation or may the best subject grade from either option be used for that purpose, as was the case in 2020?
• Billy Ryle is a Career Guidance Counsellor and Educational Commentator
