School exams - Credibility of system must be protected

THIS morning more than 110,000 young people begin school exams; 53,345 will sit the Leaving Certificate and 57,006 will take the Junior Certificate.

There is an increase in the number of people who chose to sit the Leaving Certificate Applied programme at 3,475, up almost 10% on 2007.

For some students the exams are no more than a milestone, for others they represent the end of their school days. For some they will be an ordeal, for others a long-dreamt-of Rubicon.

It is not so very long ago that these challenges were purely academic but in recent years a whole industry has built up around “the exams”. Psychologists, dieticians, personal trainers, grind schools, every class of study guru all topped off with studios full of experts, each offering their tuppence worth on the best way to crack higher level maths or the more challenging poets.

Whether these innovations are aimed at comforting parents or scholars is moot but they can add an unnecessary degree of stress to an event well within the capabilities of the vast majority of those involved in it.

Adding grist to the mill is the contention that the exams are being dumbed down. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that it is easier to get higher grades than it once was.

The number of A or B grades recorded in higher level courses has nearly doubled since 1991. But a study, by two Institute of Technology Tralee academics, found it difficult to confirm that higher academic standards pertained. An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report could not do that either.

There has also been a significant increase in the number of CAO points secured since 1995. The number of students securing 600 CAO points is up by 500%, while the number getting 500 points or more is up by 125%. These are matters of substance and must be considered as they may be a factor in the continuing inability of Irish universities to secure places among the top rank of world colleges. The international integrity of our exam system must be protected and if that means making the exams more difficult then so be it.

There is a special irony in all of this excitement as this week we publish a series showing what it’s really like at the coalface of Irish education. We have pointed to a litany of schools that were promised new buildings that have not materialised. We have pointed to overcrowded schoolrooms where teachers heroically struggle to try to overcome inadequate facilities, all of which leaves thousands of pupils at a considerable disadvantage.

Almost two-thirds of schools that were told 18 months ago that their building projects would be started earlier this year are still waiting for approval from the Department of Education.

Former education minister Mary Hanafin announced a list of 54 primary schools in November 2006 that she said could proceed to construction with their extensions or new buildings within 15 months but, according to the Department of Education, only 19 of them are under construction or have approval to begin work.

Is it too cynical to suggest that these meaningless promises are one of the reasons that the exams have to be less challenging than they were?