SOME ENCOURAGING trends are evident in the Junior Cert results published yesterday. Almost 80 per cent of students taking higher level maths secured an honour while the failure rate was just 3 per cent, the lowest since the revised syllabus was introduced in 2003. There was also good news on science. Almost two-thirds of students who took science opted for higher level and 80 per cent gained an honours grade.
In his response to the results, Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe was anxious to accentuate these positives. It was noteworthy how he also exhorted students to continue with science subjects when choosing their Leaving Cert options.
Essentially, the Minister was acknowledging a key weakness of the exam - the tendency of so many students to abandon science and maths at higher level. And the figures are depressing. While over 23,000 take higher level maths at Junior Cert level, less than half of this figure take its equivalent exam in the Leaving Cert. The trend in science is equally worrying with relatively few Junior Cert students opting to take physics or chemistry at Leaving Cert level. This year, less than 8,000 students sat each of these exams at higher level in the Leaving Cert and there is little sign that the fall-off in student interest is being arrested.
There are several factors which help explain these trends, notably the perceived difficulty of these subjects in the Leaving Cert. Various expert reports have tended to confirm the view that maths and science subjects in the Leaving Cert are more time consuming and marked more harshly than others; small wonder students are deserting them in droves.
The Department of Education should move to ensure that the Leaving Cert is more of a level playing field; the current position where skills acquired during Junior Cert cycle are put to one side is disturbing.
Another notable aspect of the Junior Cert exam is the overwhelming dominance of French over other foreign languages. While more than 34,000 students sat French at higher or ordinary level, the figures taking any other foreign language remain surprisingly low. Less than 5,000 sat Spanish. There is the sense here that the Junior Cert is removed from the real world in which tens of thousands of Irish people travel to and from Spain every year. One senses that many more students would opt for Spanish if it was more widely available in schools. But subject choice , it seems, is often dictated by custom and practice - rather than contemporary needs.