PRESIDENT'S LOG:There are many things undermining our education system but grade inflation is not one of them, writes FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI

A LITTLE OVER 30 years ago I was awarded my first degree, a Bachelor of Law, from Trinity College, Dublin. Out of a class of maybe 55, which had a zero drop-out rate, two got a first class grade (modesty prevents me from saying more). And I remember a lecturer congratulating us, because that was twice the norm at the time; in fact, it was a 100 per cent grade inflation over the previous year.

About five years later, when I was a lecturer in Trinity’s School of Business Studies, at the annual examination board one of the external examiners took us to task in robust terms, telling us that our unwillingness to reward merit in the brighter students was inexplicable and placed these students at a disadvantage once they were in the labour market.

The worry expressed by the examiner was that Irish academics were remarkably unwilling either to award first class marks or to fail anyone. All students seemed to be bunched in the mid range of marks, and this, he said, showed a huge lack of self-confidence in the examiners.

As time went by, I became more willing to go to both ends of the spectrum. If a student was better than I was I would award them over 80 per cent; and if they clearly had no idea what was going on they would be failed.

But over the years the students also changed. In my class at college there were some really bright students, but did they work day and night for exams? A few did, but most didn’t. And did we all care deeply what degree classification we got? No, not really. Some did, and we kind of avoided those. Most didn’t, provided they passed. After my finals I remember talking to a solicitor who told me that he would never consider employing a law graduate awarded a first – they were “just too full of themselves”, impossible to train.

So now, how the world has changed! As we all know from the news, Irish universities are no longer shy about awarding top marks. And, though this wasn’t part of the story, they are also less shy about failing students. The clustering of most results in the middle range is over.

And what do we think of this? Not much, apparently. It seems that the improvement in results at the top is evidence of massive dumbing down. More students getting good grades can only mean one thing: that they are getting worse. That’s the logic of it. Okay, the accusation is more sophisticated than that. It is that we have been lowering points at college entry at the same time as recording better results in the finals. But there are many things wrong with rushing to that conclusion. Students work quite differently now. They want a good grade, because without it they won’t get their preferred job. They are being pushed by parents, and they are scared of failing. In addition, they now have the opportunity to test their skills through continuous assessment exercises. They have a different attitude to what was the norm in my student days.

And before anyone starts to believe that widening access to third-level has harmed standards, the special access students who often get into university on lower points typically outperform their non-access peers and are less likely to drop out. As the system has normalised and participation has risen, we have got exactly what you would expect: higher failure and drop out rates, and better results at the top.

So is talk of our declining educational standards just wrong? No, not a bit. We have complaints from industry and others in which concerns are being expressed, and we ignore these at our peril.

But the issue is not grade inflation, as even with higher grades now our students perform less well than their counterparts in the UK and US. Better grades are not the issue. In fact, when Craig Barrett (left) delivered the lecture in which he said our education system was at best average, he never mentioned grade inflation.

So what are the problems? There are many. Primary schools have an unbalanced curriculum, which neglects the essential preparation for maths and science later. The Leaving Cert encourages wrong learning methods and turns students off maths, science and technology.

The CAO system pushes young people into the wrong careers. Our politicians think that we can build a world-beating system of education by reducing funds and cutting off income options for the universities, leaving us mouthing world class ambitions with resources that are not much better than those of a developing country. These are things that are undermining our standards and we are not addressing them.

So as the Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe investigates standards in our education system, let us hope he is asking the right questions.

Ferdinand von Prondzynski is president of Dublin City University