Tomorrow, the Leaving Certificate results will arrive at schools and thousands of students will learn whether they have a chance of gaining admission to a third-level institution. Nearly a generation has passed since the introduction in 1976 of the points system which determines how students gain entry to universities and colleges. It certainly brought greater fairness and transparency to a highly competitive area, made more so by growing demographic pressures. Its operation has been accompanied by a great expansion of third-level education and universal acknowledgement that this is the key both to employment opportunities and economic growth.
But the points system has had its down sides as well. They are well identified in the educational terms of reference given to a new commission which will start to examine it next month, chaired by Dr Aine Hyland, professor of education at University College, Cork, and with a membership broadly representative of those most directly concerned. The commission will look at the effect on second-level students' personal development, conscious of the uneven impact the points system has had on those with differing levels of ability and educational achievement. Why should the educational system's priorities be set to such an extent by the needs of its brightest participants? The impact on subject choices, teaching methods and learning and assessment techniques are central parts of the commission's mandate. To what extent has the points system distorted them so as to maximise competitive performance at the cost of a more rounded education? And thirdly the commission will examine the impact on students' selection of third-level courses.
Is the common good best served by a system which tilts so much effort towards gaining access to subjects such as law, medicine and engineering, rather than a more varied and flexible choice of third-level subjects? Why, anyway, should the Leaving Certificate be defined so exclusively as a university entrance examination?
The Minister for Education, Mr Martin, has added a fourth question for the commission - how to improve the very low levels of admissions to third-level colleges by students from disadvantaged areas. This is a timely reminder of a central truth about the Irish educational system. The effects of free secondary education and the great enlargement of the third-level sector have been to equalise or redistribute access to educational opportunity as between upper-middle, middle and lower-middle class families, whether urban or rural, rather than to extend it to working class or small farming ones. As a result social mobility in Ireland has been limited in comparison to other European states, Britain included.
The new commission is therefore a timely initiative which will have maximum impact in the coming weeks as students go through the annual exercise of finding college places. The next generation will have somewhat less pressure of numbers chasing scarce resources because of demographic shifts. But in the meantime, when the schools reopen in September, the business of chasing points will begin all over again.