Sir, – The Irish education system took a further step towards irrelevance this week with the proposed abolition of Junior Certificate, widening even further the gap between educational standards and the requirements of the real world.
At a time when Ireland Inc is desperately trying to compete in an open world economy, with significant opportunities in IT-based industries, our educational system is moving further away from establishing and (independently) assessing fundamental standards of literacy and numeracy.
Fado, education standards were assessed at primary, intermediate and leaving levels. In the near future, our children will receive their first independent assessment of their competencies as they leave school and head out into the real world, a world which is a lot harsher and more demanding than the protected environment they have grown up in.
If we owe our children anything, it is surely an education system which prepares them for the realities of the real world, where significant competencies are required and an appreciation that, such competencies are, sometimes, not easily achieved and cannot be avoided.
The real world owes us little and cares less: we need to ensure our school leavers are, above all, properly educated to challenge for their place in it.
Sir, – As someone who was centrally involved in the design and introduction of the Junior Certificate programme back in the 1980s, I welcome wholeheartedly the changes now being introduced for that programme (October 4th). When the programme was first being developed, a contemporary research finding suggested that national educational reform typically took at least 30 years to come to fruition! At the time, we confidently expected no such protracted delay. But it seems the international research was more accurate than we thought.
The radical proposals of the NCCA and the strong and committed leadership of the Minister for Education are hugely important. An earlier minister, Donogh O’Malley, is well-remembered for the introduction of “free education”. A key spin-off from that decision was the abolition of the Primary Certificate examination in 1967. This facilitated the introduction of a new child-centred primary curriculum free from the tyranny of examinations.
The current radical revision of the Junior Certificate can have a similarly liberating effect on teaching and learning in the junior cycle of our second-level schools. It can immediately address the lack of symmetry between and continuation from primary to post-primary education. Equally, a vibrant, broad and enriched educational experience in the junior cycle can provide the platform for learners to engage constructively and maturely with the high stakes Leaving Certificate programme, without recourse to cramming and test-fixation.
There is a strong body of experience in Irish education, dormant for nearly a generation, but now ready to be rekindled, in the experience of curriculum development projects in humanities and science that flourished in decades past. These projects involved models of school-based assessment and cross-moderation which can inform developments through the coming years.
The Junior Certificate programme was always intended to foster critical and creative thinking. The failure of the programme to achieve anything like its potential has been a continuing frustration for those of us who designed it.
Overcoming the fear of failure, and recognising that there is invariably more than one solution to any given problem is at the heart of creative education. The cultures of art practice and of design thinking, which define the learning environment of the art college, can have a hugely influential role in the new format of the Junior Certificate.
Congratulations to the NCCA and the Minister for showing the courage and imagination to re-ignite the original vision! – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Last year, I retired from secondary teaching after 38 years at the chalkface. During that period, I saw the Inter Cert become the Junior Cert, leading, supposedly, to vast improvements in pupil participation, progress, understanding and initiative. Of course, this didn’t happen.
There is one immutable status quo in education: students who are engaged, committed, diligent and interested will do well, others will not. So, Ruairí Quinn can change content, name and presentation all he likes, he can’t change human nature. – Yours, etc,