'A huge retrograde step': Opposition TDs criticise plan to hold traditional Leaving Cert exams
The Labour party’s education spokesperson Aodhán Ó Ríordáin said the Department of Education had displayed no imagination on the possibility of an alternative form for Leaving Cert 2022. File picture
The Government's plan to hold traditional Leaving Certificate examinations in 2022 has been labelled "extremely disappointing" and "a huge retrograde step" by opposition TDs.
The Labour party’s education spokesperson Aodhán Ó Ríordáin said any move to change the current hybrid model would be “devastating” to a cohort of students who have experienced “a massive amount of disruption”.
He said that the Department of Education had displayed no imagination on the possibility of an alternative form for Leaving Cert 2022 and appeared to be “welded” to the old Leaving Cert, which was “brutal” and needed to be reformed.
He told , that to date, Education Minister Norma Foley had “always done the right thing” when it came to the Leaving Cert, but this year it appeared there had been “different voices” on education that were not “on board” with any change.
The Ombudsman for Children, who had expressed concern about the mental health of children, had been ignored, said Mr Ó Ríordáin.
"This decision is extremely disappointing."
On the same programme, Sinn Féin's Pearse Doherty described the staging of a traditional Leaving Cert in 2022 as “absolutely the wrong decision" and called for it to be "reversed immediately”.
The Donegal TD said students were suffering with mental health issues and that the pandemic had caused great disruption to their academic lives.
He said the fact that students had not been listened to on the issue was a “huge retrograde step".
Addressing the Department's of Education's view that it would not possible to adopt an accredited grades approach this year because one-quarter of the students did not sit the Junior Cert, and therefore the necessary data would not be available to examiners, Mr Doherty suggested calculated grades could be used for this quarter.
"There is a need to find imaginative solutions," he said.
Mr Doherty said school life had been disrupted by Covid, now the minister was saying that it had to go on as normal.
"It's time to reverse the decision and to give students a choice, for which they had made a very articulate call," he added.
GAA commentator and school principal Colm O’Rourke, meanwhile, has described the plan to go ahead with traditional exams as “the least worst option”.
However, the decision should have been made last September, he told RTÉ Radio’s show.
Mr O’Rourke, who is principal of St Patrick's Classical School in Navan, said the accredited grades system had become completely discredited.
“You cannot have a situation where over a space of two years, you had 200 plus getting 70 H1s and then it jumps to 900 H1s," he said.
If given a choice, students would opt for the hybrid system, he said, but a system with objective standards must be run and the Leaving Cert, for all its failings, delivers that.
Mr O'Rourke said radical reform of the Leaving Cert was needed going forward.
However, he acknowledged there was stress and pressure on students no matter what they did in life and this was something with which they must learn to cope.
On the same programme, Social Democrats education spokesperson Gary Gannon said students should be given a hybrid option and there was a chance for innovation, but the department and minister had failed to engage in that process.
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