Timely feedback is one of the key criteria for assessment practices that help students learn. Where does that leave receiving results six months after you sat an examination?
In fairness to the State Examinations Commission, there were many reasons why the junior cycle results were so delayed, including the inability to recruit sufficient examiners.
That shortfall is connected to a general crisis in recruiting teachers, whether it be for temporary contracts, permanent jobs or short-term substitution.
This crisis is not receiving anywhere near enough attention.
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It is not just that teachers are exhausted after more than two years of teaching during a pandemic. More and more teachers say that it takes them longer and longer to recover from the academic year. Spending July correcting is not exactly an optimum way to gain energy for another demanding year.
There are some horror stories about what correcting involved. Emma O’Kelly, RTÉ's education correspondent, reported that one teacher had 300 exams and 300 projects to correct. The marking scheme was changed four times, the last time after she had already corrected 100 papers. Each change meant correcting the papers all over again but she was only paid for one marking.
The process took three weeks of 12-hour days and in the end, she was paid €1,200 before tax.
It is also not just that correcting is hard work and not particularly well-paid: exhaustion and burnout are common in the profession and that is reflected in fewer people opting to examine.
Why is there such a crisis in teaching? There are many reasons. Despite the universal envy of the long holidays, when people actually try teaching, they rapidly discover that the holidays do not mitigate the enormous stress and initiative overload.
Despite the teacher shortage, some teachers in subjects that are in less demand are still finding it hard to access secure full-time work. They know that they will not be able to secure mortgages, or even if they do, that they won’t be able to afford to live in urban areas.
At post-primary level, the rollout of the junior cycle over the past eight years or so damaged teacher morale very badly. Minister for Education Norma Foley implicitly acknowledged this at a recent conference of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals.
Speaking about senior cycle reform, she said: “I would be foolish not to learn from the junior cycle – I would be very foolish. I was part of that, I was there when all of that unfolded, so I want to do it differently, I want to do it better.”
It is kind of surreal to realise that Foley was a teacher and lived through the same disillusioning process as the rest of us. There were junior cycle in-services where the facilitators could not answer basic questions about what the reform involved, or patronised teachers who asked for sample papers by saying that this reflected old-fashioned thinking and that sample papers were irrelevant.
The new exams were supposed to be low-stakes but these results from the first time that all the subjects were examined confirm what teachers suspected – it is very, very difficult to get the highest grade, called a distinction, which you must get 90 per cent or more to achieve.
Obviously, distinctions should not be thrown around like confetti, but if only 2 to 3 per cent of students achieve them, how does this fit with an allegedly low-stakes exam? Even higher merits are hard to achieve and there is a suspicion that those calling the shots want the majority of marks clustered around the merit mark, which is ≥ 55 and ≤ 75 per cent.
There are excellent aspects to the new junior cycle, including the emphasis on active learning and on the increased inclusion of those with special or additional educational needs
The merit descriptor spans a very broad range, and it is disappointing for students to try so hard and not to know whether they have achieved the equivalent of what used to be a C or a higher mark that used to be a B. Similarly, classroom-based assessments were supposed to reduce stress but in high-achieving schools, they have had the opposite effect.
The new common-level papers, where every question has to be answered, manage not to be challenging enough for the academically-able students and still do not allow the more academically-challenged pupils to show off what they know.
There are excellent aspects to the new junior cycle, including the emphasis on active learning and on the increased inclusion of those with special or additional educational needs.
But people are still worried about senior cycle reform, not least because Leaving Cert stress is generated by the points race. Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris has indicated that colleges must recognise a wider range of student skills for third-level entry but it still does not address the fundamental problem – post-primary education is being distorted by being a de facto college-entry system.
Foley has said that she wants a shared vision and shared ownership of the new senior cycle. Unless urgent steps are taken to meet the needs of the Irish education system right now, including incentivising people to remain in or enter teaching, her shared vision and ownership will never become a reality.