Junior Cert reform put to the test - the arguments for and against
AS WE head into the long St Patrick’s Day weekend, for many third-year students it will be a weekend of revision.
These students and their teachers are now in “exam” mode.
Even though it is only March, teaching the curriculum and opening young minds to new knowledge and concepts is over for many for the remainder of this school year.
Instead our students and their teachers have their sights on the Junior Cert exams which are still three months away. Class-time and homework are occupied with revising, examining marking schemes, looking at previous papers, rote-learning, trying to predict what poet or question is likely to come up. In three months’ time.
As a parent, I don’t want this for any child. As the minister for education and skills, I don’t want this for any student or any teacher.
The current system is all about exams. The new JCSA or Junior Cycle Student Awards is all about students.
I want to change the existing system, taking away an unnecessary high-stakes exam for 15-year-olds. I want to replace it with a system of teaching, learning, and assessment which liberates students and their teachers.
We want our young people to develop skills like critical thinking, problem solving, and communicating ideas. We want them to be creative, innovative, and engaged. We want to impart skills to them that they will be able to apply in their lives well beyond secondary school.
Teacher unions say they are in favour of reform and welcome many of the elements contained in the new JCSA. But, they insist they do not want to change the external method of assessment. In other words, they want to keep a high-stakes exam for 15-year-olds.
Evidence shows us that unless we change the assessment model, nothing else will change.
The evidence shows that the high-stakes examination is warping the learning experience of students. Irish students are being taught to the test. The current system, while it has merits, is acting as a straitjacket for teachers and learners.
It stresses students and their parents and has a negative effect on teaching and learning.
It is time for change. The system is ready. All education partners agree that change is necessary.
Under the new JCSA, 60% of marks will be awarded in a final exam at the end of third year, 40% will be awarded during second and third year through in-school assessment of projects, oral presentations or group work. There will be no need for mock exams. There should be no need for grinds.
Teacher unions argue that the new JCSA will not have the same standards or equity as the old Junior Cert.
However, there are already safeguards in place on standards and I am happy to discuss any further ideas teacher representatives have — if only they would spell them out.
The State Exams Commission (SEC) will set every terminal exam in the new JCSA and provide a marking scheme to all teachers. For English, Irish, and maths, the SEC will set and mark the exams for the foreseeable future.
Every two-subject teacher will receive a minimum of 16 days training for the JCSA. This includes a minimum of four days training per subject and every school will be allowed to close one full day a year for the next eight years for the entire teaching staff to embed the new ways of teaching and assessing.
However, teachers say these are inadequate.
I have listened to their concerns and offered to discuss external supports for moderating student work. School management bodies have made written proposals to my department on how external moderation might work including a review by the SEC. This is under active consideration.
However, teacher unions have refused to put proposals in writing despite repeated requests. They say that unless there is an external high-stakes examination, reform will not work.
I reject that because I have confidence in the professionalism and integrity of our teachers.
I want to see third-year students spending St Patrick’s Day celebrating our nation, rather than cramming for a distant exam.
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THIS week thousands of second-level teachers all over the country engaged in a public protest during their lunch breaks to highlight their concerns about the minister for education and skills’ framework for Junior Cycle, which is due to be implemented in second-level schools from September 2014.
The framework, announced by the minister, Ruairi Quinn, in October 2012, is a complex document setting out ambitious plans for junior cycle education.
Some of the proposals contained in it are supported by — and indeed have been long championed by — teachers. The framework’s emphasis on learner autonomy for students, its increased focus on developing skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, and communicating with others, and its move from content learning to student-centred learning have been welcomed by the ASTI and the TUI.
So what then are teachers’ concerns? This question was put to a number of teachers taking part in Tuesday’s protest by journalists from newspapers, radio stations and TV stations around the country. In interview after interview, teachers stated that their biggest concerns are the abolition of the State Certificate at junior cycle and the awarding of junior cycle exam grades by students’ own teachers.
In October 2012, not only did the minister announce his plan to abolish the terminal externally-assessed examination and the State certificate at the end of junior cycle, he embarked on this radical policy shift without any consultation with teachers or other education partners.
In fact, only 11 months previously, in November 2011, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) — the body responsible for advising the minister on curriculum and assessment matters — had recommended to him that the junior cycle be reformed, but that the State exam and State certificate be retained.
The NCCA encompasses not only the education partners, but a broad range of education stakeholders, including industry and Government appointees.
What all of this means is that in the coming months, second-level teachers will be asked to implement radical changes to junior cycle education that they believe are educationally unsound and that are based on the minister’s views and not on the recommendations of the expert education body established to advise him.
In response to the public protest by second-level teachers on Tuesday, the minister stated that he was “frustrated” by teachers’ complaints and that he was still waiting for teachers to spell out in writing what resources they wanted to implement his junior cycle plans.
We are simply astounded by this response. The ASTI and the TUI have spent almost 18 months communicating teachers’ concerns to the minister and his department. We have done this through discussions, letters, and submissions.
We have issued statements, provided empirical evidence, published articles, and made public presentations, including a presentation to the joint Oireachtas committee on education.
To date, 10,000 teachers have signed our petition which states “we do not support the Junior Cycle Framework proposal for school-based assessment”. In all of our communications, we have stated clearly our view that the minister’s proposals to abolish the State certificate and have teachers’ grade their own students’ junior cycle exams are educationally unsound. We have, quite literally, spelled it out. Despite all this, the minister is demanding that teachers provide details of the resources needed to implement his proposals — the proposals that teachers believe will damage students’ education.
This assumption that teachers will acquiesce and act as compliant service providers, rather than passionate educationalists, is naive in the extreme. It is particularly so in the context of years of education cutbacks, some of which were announced by the current minister, and which have severely undermined the capacity of schools to continue to innovate and reform.
Minister, teachers will not collude with educationally unsound junior cycle plans for the sake of a quiet life.
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