A chara, – The traditional Leaving Certificate examination has not changed substantially over the years. Currently, students are assessed mainly by written examinations in most subject areas. It would be difficult to imagine a more educationally-regressive system that requires students of mathematics, Gaeilge, biology, French and history to spend 15 hours and 30 minutes doing written assessments over three days.
The Leaving Certificate programme should be modularised and assessed over a two-year period.
The subject specialists and the relevant parties are best placed to decide what to assess and how to assess at each stage and what weighting should be allocated to each assessment.
Four assessments over a two-year period would allow for the use of different assessment methods as well as examining a greater cross-section of each subject area.
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I am not suggesting four mini-versions of the current system.
We hear much talk about the importance of feedback to students. I suggest students should be given the results and feedback after each assessment to enable them improve where necessary.
An essential element of this proposed system is assessments should be marked externally and independently. This change would mean that the final results should be available much earlier than the current arrangement of mid-August. This would allow third-level institutions the time to use additional or alternative selection mechanisms other than points only to select students for some courses, if so desired, and rechecks could be facilitated earlier.
The runaway train of predicted grades awaits the students of 2023 as the grade distribution of the 2022 cohort will be “no lower” than the inflated grades of 2021.
It will be interesting to see the details of the “post-marking intervention” by the State Examinations Commission, if required.
Could this post-marking intervention, be perceived as grade inflation by the SEC which was attributed largely to teachers in 2021?
– Le dea-mhéin,
SEÁN DE BRÚN,
Senior lecturer,
Mary Immaculate College,
Limerick,