Madam, - I agree with your Education Editor's analysis (The Irish Times, December 30th) of the new report from the Education Research Centre on grading in the Leaving Certificate.
When one looks at the failure rates in the 2003 Leaving Cert it is very clear that science subjects are marked much more severely than others. How the authors of this report can argue differently is puzzling to say the least.
Here are the failure rates in Leaving Cert subjects last year for higher and ordinary level respectively: Biology: 9.1%; 20.4%. Chemistry: 5.9%; 6.6%. Physics: 11.1%; 10.9%. Art: 0.5%; 4.7%. English: 1.5%; 2.3%. Irish: 1.4%; 3.5%. Music: 0.0%; 1.2%.
"'Students sitting higher level chemistry and physics in 2000 and 2001 did consistently less well than they did in other Higher level subjects that they sat," according to research by David Millar and Ruth Murphy commissioned by the Government-appointed Task Force on the Physical Sciences, 2002.
As Sean Flynn writes, physics had the lowest honours rate of any Leaving Cert subject in 2003 with only 66 per cent of students getting a Grade C or better on the higher level paper. This fact is doubly puzzling, since from my experience of 25 years teaching physics at second level, only the more able student tends to take it on and stick with it. The more able students are getting the lowest honours rate; something must be wrong with the grading system!
Add to this the fact that our country needs more students to take science subjects and one really ends up being mystified. Is it any surprise that science in UCD requires fewer points than any other UCD course? Has the standard for science exams been set too high?
The Leaving Certificate should be a level playing field for students. Is allowance made for the degree of difficulty of science subjects? For example, is allowance made for the fact that a student must learn a new scientific vocabulary, which is like learning another language, just to be able to read the paper? To answer these and other questions we need a new transparency in Leaving Cert exams.
We need the people in the State Examinations Commission responsible for setting the science exams and for marking schemes to explain their reasoning and examination policy clearly. - Yours etc.,
GERRY AYLWARD,
Shankill,
Co Dublin.