College Choice/Brian Mooney: Students offered places by the CAO last Monday have until August 30th at 5.15pm to accept.
Places not filled in round one will be offered in round two on September 2nd, online at 6am and by post that morning. By then a new academic year will have started in schools and the whole process will start all over again.
What lessons can we draw from the Leaving Certificate result and CAO offer season that has just ended? A shadow was cast over the examination in June by the dreadful bus crash in Meath, and the seeming inability of the examination system, to make any practical adjustment to its procedures, to accommodate students traumatised by the experience.
This problem of deeply traumatised students taking examinations has always been there. They have had to sit Leaving Certificate papers at 7am in the morning, prior to attending a family funeral, only to return to the school in the afternoon, to sit another examination paper. This is an inhumane system and should end now.
How to humanise the Leaving Certificate examination system
The solution is simple. The State Examinations Committee (SEC) should operate a handful of examination centres, immediately following the end of the existing Leaving Certificate. They should follow the exact same schedule as the initial examination, in which the substitute paper that already exists is offered to any student who was not present in the examination centre on the day of the initial examination.
Given the small numbers involved, the correction of such scripts would be complete in time for the normal date for issuing results.
Overcoming fears of failure in maths and Irish
The fallout from the examination itself centred on two issues - the large number of students who dropped a level in both maths and Irish in the weeks leading up to the examination - two thousand per level in both cases, and the large number of students who failed ordinary-level maths.
Two thousand students abandoning higher-level maths and Irish at the last minute robs the system of many potential male primary-teacher graduates and young level-eight engineering graduates.
Can the review of the Leaving Certificate, currently been considered by Minister for Education Mary Hanafin, consider strategies to support and encourage students in taking the Leaving Certificate higher paper in these two key subjects, as well as in other important curriculum areas such as the sciences?
A novel suggestion might be the recognition of an E grade at higher level as an actual appropriate grade at ordinary level, thus the fear of failure is removed which is driving the drop in levels.
The need for a 21st-century maths curriculum, the high failure rate in ordinary level maths and the large numbers taking foundation level - which has very little value in the third-level market place, where students negotiate their progression following secondary education - raises serious questions concerning the existing mathematics curriculum which has been in place since the 1960s.
The Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development has found that Irish students perform well in the area of understanding mathematical principles. They fall down in the application of those principles in solving mathematical problems.
Ms Hanafin must instruct the National Council for Curriculum Assessment to revise the current maths curriculum as a matter of urgency, to engage students' interest and attention.
This would ensure problems addressed in the application of mathematical principles are those appropriate to the 21st century.
Furthermore, greater effort should be made in transition year to expose students to, and engage them with, the operation of mathematical principles in the real world.
Developing and staffing an effective health service
Moving on from the examination structure to the issue of allocating places in further and higher education, it is clear that we have a major problem in the provision of sufficient places in medical and paramedical education.
We also have adopted a model of nursing education that cuts out the majority of students, confining entry to the highly academic.
We are not training sufficient medical personnel across the board to provide ourselves with the quality health service we all want for our families and ourselves.
The lack of quality ongoing training opportunities, within many of our hospitals, is leading to many of those that we do train going abroad to advance their career prospects, as reported recently in The Irish Times.
Government must address these issues, raised in the recent report by Dr Patrick Fottrell, as a matter of urgency.
Opportunities in a range of other courses
Outside the area of health, the further and higher education system seems to be addressing the needs of both students and society.
There is still an ongoing concern regarding the number of vacant places in engineering, information technology, computer science and general science courses, although the situation seems to be stabilising somewhat.
What about those students who did not achieve the course they desired?
There is still the possibility that offers will be made to you in later rounds of the CAO process. There is also the possibility that you may be upgraded in a subject or subjects through the recheck process, leading to an offer of your preferred place in October.
There are also many vacant places available through the CAO at www.cao.ie. , particularly in the areas of science and technology outlined above. The process of applying for a vacant place is similar to a change-of-mind form.
The student has to decide whether they want to place the vacant course at the top of their CAO list or farther down, below other courses from which they may hope to receive an offer in later rounds.
For accuracy and efficiency, it is essential that this be done online and that any course listed is higher up the list of courses than an existing offer. Courses entered below an existing offer will never be offered.
Finally, thousands of places are still available on PLC courses, in apprenticeships and traineeships through Fás. Direct application courses, in your chosen field of interest, are possibly still available through the private colleges: Portobello, Griffith, Dublin Business School, and American College.
These colleges are fee paying, but have full academic credibility and the fees charged are tax deductible at standard rate.
This is Brian Mooney's final column in the current series on CAO options. He will be writing extensively on the second round of CAO offers in a special supplement next Friday.
- You can email Brian Mooney on bmooney@irish-times.ie
- Are you confident you will secure your CAO option? Join the discussion forum on Skoool.ie, the award-winning education website developed by The Irish Times, AIB and Intel.