System change ‘could add to student pressure’

THE replacement of Leaving Certificate results with other methods to determine points for college entry could add to the pressure on school-leavers instead of easing it, Institute of Guidance Counsellors president Eilis Coakley has claimed.

The points system has come under scrutiny in the past week as a leading academic and third-level boss suggested colleges should consider using other criteria in conjunction with school-leavers’ grades to select entrants for degree courses.

Professor Tom Collins, chair of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, and interim president of National University of Ireland Maynooth, said demands for high grades force schools to focus on rote learning and means students begin college with little ability for self-directed learning. His views were echoed last week by Clive Byrne, director of the National Association for Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD), but Tánaiste and Education Minister Mary Coughlan insisted that the points system based on Leaving Certificate results remains the fairest selection method despite the huge stress it causes for students.

Ms Coakley said that, although the use of exam grades is a raw instrument to assess students going into third level, adding other levels of assessment could put more pressure on young people.

“If we move away from the Leaving Certificate, you just move the stress into whatever other system you use. Preparing a portfolio in time for deadlines for art courses, for example, already adds stress to those students. Using Leaving Certificate is fair, albeit brutally fair, and we need a broad debate before making any big changes,” Ms Coakley said.

Adding points for any particular subject could skew what is already a very raw method of assessing students, she said.

The presidents of the institutes of technology meet this week to consider their response to Ms Coughlan’s request for bonus entry points for higher level maths, ahead of a meeting with the minister in a few weeks. There is strong disagreement in the university sector as far more of their degrees command high CAO points where bonus points would be crucial.

University of Limerick already offers maths bonus points, and Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University have come out in favour of their introduction. But academic councils at University College Cork and National University of Ireland Galway oppose them.

The academics at National University of Ireland Maynooth will discuss it next month but are understood to be strongly divided, as are their counterparts at University College Dublin, where it is believed those opposing bonus points may be in the majority when the issue is discussed next month.

However, Ms Coughlan has already advised students starting fifth year over the coming week to be aware that bonus points for maths could be available for some college courses from 2012.