Teachers ‘should correct’ their students’ exam papers

Teachers should correct their own students’ Junior Certificate exam papers, the head of the country’s second-level principals has suggested as almost 59,000 students get their results this morning.

Clive Byrne, director of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, says the planned reforms of the three-year junior cycle were aimed at making the exam less high-stakes but said things could be taken further.

“If we’re in the middle of reforming it to ensure it’s not a high-stakes exam any more, why not be a bit more courageous? The idea is to see if we could diminish the effect of exams on students by having them corrected by their own teachers, who would make professional judgments and offer direct feedback.”

Mr Byrne, who was recently nominated by Education Minister Ruairi Quinn to the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, said he would like to see such changes implemented quickly but accepted it could take several years to be agreed.

The junior cycle reforms approved by Mr Quinn last year require teachers to mark their students on new short-course subjects. Teenagers will be allowed count results in up to four of these towards the new Junior Certificate qualification from 2017.

Unions have already expressed reservations about the possible impact on relations with their students. However, figures obtained by the Irish Examiner show hundreds of teachers are marking students on an unpaid basis in the optional Junior Cert Irish oral.

Since marks for the oral test increased from 20% to 40%, the number of students availing of the option has risen from 725 at just 24 schools in 2009, to 7,388 — or 14.5% of those getting Irish results today — at 155 schools.

The rises emerge despite an Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland ban on members assessing students at their own schools for State exams. It says oral exams should be conducted independently by the State Examinations Commission and has told members that local arrangements where teachers assess students in another school do not meet the required standards of quality control, objectivity, and public credibility.

The Teachers’ Union of Ireland eased a similar directive earlier this year, allowing members to test Junior Cert students in oral Irish only where it was voluntary and if they were paid to do so or the tests were done during timetabled classes.

At its summer school in July, Young Fine Gael called for second-level teachers to be obliged to correct and supervise the Junior and Leaving Certificate on an unpaid basis, with the marking of both costing about €16m a year.