The Minister for Education's enthusiasm for oral tests in English will take some time to implement in the Leaving Certificate examination. Earlier this week Mr Martin said he had asked the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment to look at the possibility of oral English exams at Leaving and Junior Cert levels.
However the last minister, Ms Niamh Bhreathnach, sent a circular to schools in April announcing that the new Leaving Cert English syllabus, which was completed last year, would only come into effect in September 1999. This means it will not be examined until June 2001.
There is no mention of oral tests in the new syllabus. There was no agreement on the NCCA's English syllabus committee about the need for them. The NCCA's syllabus document says only that "the feasibility of oral and aural assessments will be researched". Another version recommends a pilot scheme "as a matter of urgency".
There has been widespread concern among English teachers at the delay in implementing the new Leaving syllabus, which has been in preparation for more than 10 years.
English is the only one of the three "core" subjects - the others being maths and Irish - for which a new syllabus has not be introduced.
The assistant general secretary of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, Mr John White, said the delays were due partly to "change overload and change fatigue" brought about by the introduction in recent years of major new second-level programmes like the Leaving Certificate Applied, the Leaving Certificate Vocational and the transition year.
This had meant that while English teachers were pressing for the implementation of the new syllabus, other principals and teachers were finding it difficult "to cope with all this change".
He said the ASTI had come round to the view that allowing two years of in-service training before introducing a major syllabus reform in a subject like Leaving Cert English, which is taken by nearly 61,000 students, would be a good thing.
Mr White, himself a former English teacher, said it was "far more complex and difficult" to devise suitable oral tests in a first language like English, than in the languages which now have such tests.