THE DEPARTMENT of Education may move to publish an overall assessment of academic standards at second level, amid growing concern about the “dumbing down” of the Leaving Certificate exams.
Eamonn Stack, the department’s chief inspector, said yesterday that this kind of overview was worth considering when academic standards were being widely questioned.
Recently, the chief executive of the Higher Education Authority, Tom Boland, said many “spoon-fed’’ Leaving Cert students were struggling with independent learning at third level.
The department’s inspectorate will shortly publish a review of its work between 2004 and 2008. Chief inspectors in various Leaving Cert subjects also review exam performance about every two years.
But the inspectorate has been slow to comment publicly on overall academic standards in schools. There is also very little information publicly available about the performance of pupils in the Republic, compared with other EU states.
The OECD does publish occasional studies of comparative performance in literacy and maths – but this is confined to studies of 15-year-olds.
Mr Stack said he believed all second-level schools in the State had been subject to a full whole school evaluation (WSE) or a subject inspection in the past five years.
About 60 schools per year are subject to an evaluation while the work of about 3,000 teachers is examined by subject inspectors annually.
Mr Stack was speaking at a press briefing to mark the publication of a new book by Prof John Coolahan tracing the development of Ireland’s school inspectorate.
Prof Coolahan said the decision to publish inspectors’ reports on schools was having a very positive impact on the system.
One of the State’s most celebrated education academics, Prof Coolahan was also sharply critical of proposals in the McCarthy report which could see the work of independent State agencies in education reverting to the Department of Education.
This, he said, would be a counter-productive move in an education system already overly centralised and overcrowded. He said it would be “crazy, short-term thinking’’ to move successful, much admired agencies such as the State Exams Commission back under the control of the department.
A former head of education at NUI Maynooth, Prof Coolahan has played a pivotal role in the development of the modern education system.
His new book is the first independent look at the inner workings of the department and inspectorate and is based on new evidence.
A History of Ireland’s School Inspectorate, 1831-2008, written by Prof John Coolahan – with the assistance of Patrick F O’Donovan – is published by Four Courts Press.
