Richard Hogan: The delay of Junior Cert results is  ridiculous, demoralising and shambolic

Norma Foley is bottom of the Junior Cert class

Richard Hogan: "To expect students to wait over five months for their results is laughable." Picture: Mark Stedman/RollingNews.ie

The DES (Department of Education and Skills) have finally come back from the mountaintop with a date for the Junior Certificate results 2022.

Hallelujah! I was pretty close to sending that octopus who predicted the football World Cup results an email.

Ms Foley has returned with a date. They will be released on November 23, perfect timing for Christmas.

They’ll get the results on Thursday and then settle in for The Late Late Toy Show the following evening. Perfect timing by the DES!

Sarcasm, as the cliché goes, is the lowest form of wit. I’m not too savvy on what the cliché says about a Minister for Education who can’t organise the correcting of exams they have asked students to sit, something about a piss up and a brewery.

I have been working in education for many years as a teacher and lecturer and this is by far the most ridiculous, demoralising and shambolic organisation of the State exams I have ever witnessed.

To expect students to wait over five months for their results is laughable.

Like the County Council telling us, “we have no salt to ice the roads” a couple of winters ago because they hadn’t planned for a cold snap, the DES telling us they couldn’t have predicted the lack of correctors, is once again like a scene from Father Ted.

Norma Foley was just short of announcing the date wearing an, ‘I shot JR’ tee-shirt.

None of us can figure out what has caused the shortage of correctors? Actually, sorry my hand is up over here. No one likes a smart Alec, but I think I might have some insights.

The money they offer for correcting, and the tax implications on such money, makes correcting a very undesirable endeavor.

In fact, truth be told, teachers generally correct exams to get a better understanding of how to teach their course, not for the money on offer.

This fact, coupled with the exhaustive two years of working on the front line with Covid 19 wasn’t incentive enough to give up a substantial chunk of well-needed holidays this summer.

Quite frankly, teachers were burnt-out.

I give talks in schools all over Ireland, talking to staff about how to manage burn-out and over the last two years, it was very obvious to me how teachers were constantly on the brink of being overwhelmed.

Teachers who had children with underlining conditions feared their work was threatening their children’s health; teachers with elderly parents or partners with compromised immune systems all feared they could potentially kill their loved ones because of the work they were employed to do.

Of course, this was the experience of all people working on the front line. But there is very little sympathy for teachers. The media has fed this negative discourse about teachers.

I remember the cameras set up on the road to Newry during the first of many strikes about teachers’ pay being cut during the economic crash. The story was, teachers weren’t picketing; they were off shopping up in Northern Ireland.

Of course, just who were in those Irish cars was pure speculation and what teachers did after they picketed, was their own business.

But the media painted teachers as lazy, well paid with huge holidays, and a burden on public finances. They changed their tune when they saw the severity of the cut-backs imposed on teachers.

So, this summer teachers were unwilling to give up their holidays; if only there was some way to plan for that and make it more appealing. Again, sarcasm.

I have taught English for over 20 years, and I have always enjoyed watching the students receive their Junior Cert results. For 15 of those years, students would always come up to my class excited to report what they had achieved. But since they changed the exam, making it almost like MCQ (multiple choice questions) students don’t value it in the same way. They are not asked to write essays any more, just short paragraphs on superficial analysis. The grade descriptors mean little to them: ‘Partially Achieved’; and ‘Merit’. Since this new system has come into play, I have yet to experience a student excitedly come up to my class and declare, “I got a merit”.

They just don’t value it. They don’t value the exam either, and this would all be somewhat sufferable if it wasn’t for the terrible reality, students coming into 5th year are grossly weaker than students of years gone by.

They are utterly unprepared for the essay writing that will be demanded of them at this level.

They struggle massively. And the pressure on English and History teachers in particular is immense. History is really struggling as a subject. What a terrible shame that is.

The chaos around the correcting this year illuminates the current state the Junior Cert is in.

The fact that the DES were comfortable employing a cohort of unqualified trainee teachers to mark the exams this year elucidates just how desperate they were for correctors.

If I was grading Norma Foley with this ridiculously meaningless grade descriptor, she would attain a good solid, ‘Partially Achieved’.

That’s an ‘F’ in old money and I was always a generous corrector.