Alison O'Connor: Let the pandemic's silver lining be Leaving Cert reform
Leaving Cert exams will take place in June, but students will also have the option to avail of a modified calculated grades process. Picture: Dan Lienhan
What a horrible time it has been for the Leaving Certificate students of this year and last, as well as their parents. Let it be a consolation that their travails will not be in vain. Surely those coming after them will benefit from the loosening of the death-like grip that has been on this exam that has been so badly in need of reform for so long.
Even Covid has an upside very occasionally. This is one of those.
There is no doubt that any teachers’ union would have concerns around schools returning in a pandemic and the added complexity of running State exams. However the education unions really need to ‘read the room’ here in terms of where public sentiment is at. It’s not just those directly involved that feel badly for the 60,000 or so Leaving Cert students and were appalled, for instance, at how the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI) pulled out of the talks.
It’s been interesting to hear those who regularly keep up with education matters commenting that the ASTI should know it has gone too far when it makes the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) look reasonable.
I have largely been filled with admiration for how teachers have pivoted to the new reality of lockdown schooling — with their own family commitments — and understand the fears of going back when Covid levels were in the stratosphere.
This virus has placed different burdens on everyone. The burden of the teacher is that they are expected to teach and that all of the international evidence points towards the need of children to learn in a classroom with their peers, as opposed to at a desk in their bedroom or at the kitchen table. The added layer has been that parents cannot turn their attention to work while attempting to assist in the home schooling of their children.
With the ASTI, you have to wonder is this a case of a union executive being out of touch with its membership and not representing the majority of them? Perhaps it is driven by the bigger picture — the realisation of such significant changes to the exam two years in a row. No matter how obdurate you’ve been for all these years, a pandemic arrived and brought sweeping changes. The genie is out of the bottle.
It’s not just in education either. At a press conference towards the end of last April, HSE chief executive Paul Reid was heaping praise — quite rightly — on our frontline staff. But he took the chance to hammer home the idea that changes that had taken place virtually overnight in our health service because of Covid would be remaining in place.
He gave the example of the National Ambulance Service, which traditionally operates with emergency response crews. It worked “very responsively in the first couple of weeks visiting people in their homes, and now on a mass-scale testing all across long-term care settings and nursing homes”.
He said testing centres had not existed previously but, at that time, there were 47 of them across the country, as well as seven call centres dealing with Covid queries. There have been significant advances in telemedicine too.
Indeed the Taoiseach has spoken along similar lines about the changes.
Given the sheer exhaustion being experienced by health workers at the moment, it would be foolishness in the extreme to keep hammering home this message. However, the official approach has not changed.
This year, the Leaving Cert exams will take place in June, but students will also be given the option of availing of a modified version of calculated grades. While they will take place in different formats, oral, practical and performance assessments will go ahead in the coming weeks.
It took years and years to get agreement to introduce the Junior Certificate — teachers fought tooth and nail against it — but it is finally here. Now there is the strange situation where, for the first few years of their secondary schooling, students learn and study and submit assignments for assessment in this new way for this new exam. However, then they have to turn around and adapt to the stultified Leaving Certificate course.
The straws have long been in the wind regarding change.
As recently as last month, Micheál Martin said that, as we have known for many years, the Leaving Certificate uses a very limited range of methods for learning assessment. This became even clearer during 2020 “when, with no notice and with great pressure on everyone, a new system had to be put in place”.
Speaking at the launch of Mr Martin said there was a need to develop a more permanent backstop.
“Most countries in Europe have in place a mixed approach to assessment at school-leaving stage and we need to seriously engage with the potential benefits of this for Ireland. Ways where we can do more to encourage independent thinking and creativity must be considered,” he said.
If the past year and all the time we have had for reflection has taught us anything, surely it is that an exam such as the Leaving Cert and the manner in which it is currently constructed is utterly outdated.
This column has previously addressed the national insanity that takes hold in the month of June. Even those who have no children, let alone a child actually sitting the exam, would be able to tell you just what poets came up in the honours English paper or that it was widely considered among students and teachers alike that section two of the science paper was an absolute rock breaker and virtually impossible to answer unless you were Professor Luke O’Neill.
It’s not just the teachers and the Department of Education though; parents have a huge role here, caught up in the absolute frenzy of Leaving Certitis. How many high grades need to be 'scored' to land that place on the ridiculously high points third-level course?
There is also the extraordinarily snobbish attitude towards apprenticeships. It’s a really positive and sensible thing — given the needs of the workforce alone — that these are being given a higher profile. However, there is a way to go before some parents will accept that their child is not meant for further academic study and would thrive elsewhere.
No one wants to be the sacrificial lamb in a situation, as this year's and last year’s Leaving Certificate students have been, but their suffering has surely forged a new way forward for this utterly old-fashioned examination. It counts as a definite pandemic plus.
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