Youth group hits out at Leaving Cert pressures

The Leaving Certificate puts too much pressure on young people and doesn’t prepare them for life in the real world, it was claimed today.

The National Youth Federation (NYF) wants to see a dramatic overhaul of the Irish education system including the Leaving Certificate, to combat drop-out rates and stress for students.

The youth organisation believes the level of pressure put on young people to perform in one final set of exams is inappropriate and does not prepare them for their lives as adult citizens.

“There is no need for this massive build up of pressure on a whole generation,” NYF chief executive Diarmuid Kearney said.

“What we’re saying is that performance in one week in June should not determine the future for these youngsters.”

While the federation acknowledged that most students coped with the pressure of the Leaving Cert, the organisation sees many young people who are very stressed by the exam process.

Mr Kearney also said the current education system did not equip young people with the skills they needed for life or work.

“The Leaving Certificate is symptomatic of a broader need for reform,” he said.

“It epitomises a race for the finish line rather than educating the whole person.

“We see the Leaving Cert as demonstrating learning by rote rather than developing learning skills.

“As a society we need to review how we prepare young people for moving from students into adulthood.

“It’s about educating them in the round, developing their social skills,” he said.

Mr Kearney said the emphasis on academic performance and rote learning led to many students not even making it to the Leaving Certificate.

“Only when education serves the need of all pupils will we improve drop out rates and performance overall,” Mr Kearney said.

The youth network is calling for reform of the system to allow for continual assessment, real world work, and a diversity of approaches to cater for all abilities and skills.

“We say young people have failed when what has failed is the system, it has failed to meet the needs of particular groups of people,” he said.

Mr Kearney said there had been improvements to education in recent years but that the Leaving Cert still embodied a single track system.

“The system remains overly centralised and old fashioned. There is little involvement of young people or parents in the evaluation of the education they receive.”

He said it was important that school councils were developed effectively to give young people a voice, and that parents were fully engaged in their children’s education.

He also said there was a need to work with employers to ensure students had the skills necessary for the workplace when they left school.