"THE reaction of many art teachers was not one of surprise but rather - `oh, so at last someone is making a fuss about it,' "was how Helen Comiskey a past president of the Association of Art Teachers viewed the revelations of the missing Leaving Cert craftwork.
"My students all now take the alternative design option," says Limerick art teacher, Tom Short. "I just wouldn't feel confident in the procedures surrounding the craftwork section.
The problem with Leaving Cert art lies in the nature of the exam itself. The exam comprises four separate sections. All students must do a written academic paper on history and appreciation of art and three separate practical exams. The written paper takes place with the other Leaving Cert exams in June. So, too, do two of the practical exams - the compulsory life sketching (a student acts as a model in the exam hall) and the second practical exam which gives a choice of either still life or imaginative composition.
The fourth element, however, offers a choice between design and craft. Students who opt for design are examined in June, but in craft students must produce a piece of work in a one day practical exam in mid May. This could be pottery, sculpture, jewellery, batik, calligraphy or screen printing.
In some crafts the work can be completed on the day of the practical exam and it is packed and dispatched to the exams' branch of the Department of Education in Athlone by the superintendent. But pottery, for example, needs to be fired and glazed. In these cases, the exam supervisor makes arrangements with the school to pack and dispatch the finished work when it is completed.
Clearly, with all of this packing, dispatching and storing, the potential for items going astray or being damaged is high. In the case of the Ursuline in Sligo, the school dispatched the items by post and took the precaution of getting a certificate of posting - art teacher Maribeth Milne wonders what would have been the outcome if they did not have such a certificate.
Even with the artwork and craft pieces dispatched by the exam supervisor there can be problems. "It is not unknown for sheets of painting to arrive stuck together," one art teacher who works as an examiner told E&L. Another examiner spoke of getting a piece of pottery "broken in three bits ". Some art teachers complain about exam room supervisors "who know nothing about art and don't take time to let the artwork dry."
But Helen Comiskey would not criticise the exams branch. "It is badly understaffed and dealing with bulky craftwork coming in from different sources is very cumbersome. Examiners and clerical staff do their best under difficult circumstances."
Examiners come to the exams branch in Athlone to view and mark the pieces. It is very chaotic", says one examiner. "You have very little time to assess them properly and there are pieces of pottery and sculpture being wheeled hither and thither on trolleys and moved from table to table; I'm not at all surprised that some get lost."
FURTHER scope for confusion arises through the craftwork being marked by a different examiner to the rest of the art exam and separate sets of marks having to be collated. Many teachers would like to get marks issued for each of the four exam sections, says Andrina Wafer, current president of the Association of Art Teachers; this would at least show up a missing piece of work.
But having examiners come to the school to assess the pieces in situ, as happens with the Junior Cert, is seen as the ultimate solution to the problem by many art teachers. This, however, raises the hot potato of school based assessment, which the ASTI, in particular, has strong reservations about, though the TUI is more supportive.
