Having clawed my way up the heights, I’m at the summit, and from here it’ll be an easy downhill trot.
I’m talking about my State exam ordeal. Not as a student – looking back, that was the easy bit – but as a parent. Having three kids means surviving six State exams. This summer, I will have passed the halfway point, after my middle child sits the Junior Cert.
From here, I can see good in the system (no way to use pull and connections) but also some flaws I’d like to see tackled.
1. Prevent panicked, last-minute mistakes. This school system dictates to students about whether they must wear black shoes or brown. Yet it also allows Leaving Cert candidates, on the very morning of an exam, to abruptly change direction. Students who have studied an honours course for two years may, on the day of the exam, panic and opt for the ordinary or foundation paper.
Nothing good comes of making such a big decision, one that could have life-long consequences, on impulse. This is so obvious that I can’t imagine why it needs to be pointed out.
It’s not as though the school system offers students flexibility in other ways. Some schools insist kids pick their Junior Cert subjects before they have even done one day of secondary school – and abide by that decision for the next three years, no matter how much they regret their choice.
Of course, Leaving Cert students should be able to switch from honours to ordinary level, but well in advance of the test. The time to make that decision is when you’re calm, can consider the consequences, and have discussed the possibility with people who have your best interests at heart.
The best time is not on the morning of the exam, after you dreamed that all your pens ran out of ink and now the reality of the ordeal is terrifying and your mind goes blank and it’s blindingly clear that you wasted the past two years and you know nothing. Nothing!
None of which may be accurate, but you’re in no fit state to judge.
2. Free exam students from school uniforms.
I remember the struggle of doing my own Leaving Cert in an airless school hall, while sweating so much that the pen kept slipping from my hand. Why must exam candidates wear scratchy wool skirts and sweaty acrylic jumpers in June?
Last summer I saw a group of them staggering from their school hall into the glaring sun, sweltering under all that heavy cloth. I was on my way to the swimming pool. Why make the exams even more misery-inducing by insisting they be done while wearing winter clothes?
3. Defy biology.
Girls take the same exams in the same conditions as lads, yet biology fights them all the way. If a girl’s period comes during the exam – and it almost certainly will – she just has to slog on through the exhaustion, nausea, headache and pain. Plus, that same girl will have lost precious time, month after month, when she should have been studying but was instead lying in bed, moaning and clutching a hot water bottle to her tummy. The especially blessed girls – and I was one – get stabbing pains midway through their menstrual cycle as well.
Isn’t it only fair to acknowledge the additional difficulties that our female students cope with, by giving them a top-up on their results? Say an extra 10 per cent?
4. Reform the mocks.
I know what I’d like from the mocks, aka the pres: a realistic simulation of the State exam. Ideally, mocks would give students a taste of a formal exam; reflect how they’d perform if the real exam were held today; and shock slackers into action.
But what if the teacher hasn’t covered the entire curriculum before the mocks? If you’ve been taught all the material and get a C, that’s useful: it tells you you’re doing C-level work. But if you haven’t been taught all the material and so can’t attempt an entire section, that C tells you nothing.
And then there’s the fact that some kids can preview the mock papers. If you’re sitting your German mock on a Wednesday, but your friend at a different school sits the same mock paper on a Monday, that friend will helpfully tell you what came up on the paper. Or even give you her copy.
Should we expect every 15-year-old to have the maturity to resist such temptation? Parents are paying a fee for mocks that may not reflect their child’s learning – a waste of time and money.
Schools have to wise up. Either everyone in the country should sit the mocks in the same subject at the same time (as in the State exams) or each school should set its own paper.
5. Give parents a break. Every time my child sits a State exam, I receive a menacing letter demanding payment in, oh, about five days. Unfortunately, the financial recovery has yet to reach my household, which means all available cash gets budgeted on day one of the month. This leaves no leeway for sudden shakedowns by the Department of Education. Whatever we will have to pay in March, let us know the previous September.
Forward planning, you know: an essential part of education.