Sir, –Your recent editorial (August 22nd) predictably calls for the Leaving Certificate to be reformed but, as is sadly typical, fails to offer any detailed alternative. Previous reform ideas featured in The Irish Times have included teacher assessment of their own students for the purposes of State certification. Teaching unions were berated for their opposition to such measures. The common argument was that if university lecturers do it, then why shouldn’t secondary teachers? The exceptional pandemic situation resulted in two years of teacher input in the form of predictions, based on work completed in class. Consequently, the number of students scoring 625 points rose from 207 to 1,342 in just two years. The cohort banging the drum for that particular reform have, mercifully, gone deafeningly quiet of late. Similarly, the recent rush to projects worth up to 40 per cent of subject grades is undoubtedly leading to unseen teacher, parental, sibling, grind-tutor, and AI inputs across the country. It would be naive in the extreme to think otherwise.
Reforms need to be carefully thought through, openly debated and, crucially, practitioners’ voices must be listened to.
If we have learned anything from the past few years, I hope it’s that assessments, in whatever form, need to be in-person, standardised, and anonymously graded. – Yours, etc,
DANIEL LYNCH,
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Dublin 6.