Seán Twomey: The Leaving Cert is not the sole purpose of schools

To ensure next year’s academic year can proceed as normally as possible Seán Twomey says letting teachers predict Leaving Cert grades would be best solution to a bad situation

Many students see school as a safe haven and a place of order and welcome and might be missing the emotional connection while studying at home.

Four weeks ago, on Thursday, Mar 12, the Taoiseach made the announcement to close schools effective immediately. In the process, he took everyone in education by surprise. Sure we were expecting it to come but most thought it would be at earliest after St Patrick’s Day, maybe even later.

Like many others, COVID-19 seemed a long way off until it impacted our lives directly. That afternoon, life in our school was pretty chaotic. Our teachers largely spent their time talking with our students, reassuring them, checking in that everyone was OK, parents began showing up to school unannounced to collect their children and students roamed the corridors looking for large bin liners so they could take all their books home. There was an air of holidays in the school but it was artificial, there was also an air of worry. Everyone knew that this was unexpected.

Schools are places that need structure and students need guidance. In the absence of these, frustration builds and anxiety and annoyance take hold. On the Monday of that week, I had emailed out a Covid-19 Contingency Plan to all our teachers, even though I thought we would be open for another few weeks. I knew that giving staff a clear plan was needed. While I was frustrated about the announcement happening in the middle of the day, it was a clear instruction, with clear reasoning and, without a doubt, the wisdom of it has become even clearer every day since.

Since that day, learning has progressed in secondary schools with principals, teachers, and students using Google Classroom, MS Teams or other platforms to continue to deliver some form of educational progress. We have delivered lessons, held classes and even organised assemblies with our year groups in that time. The week before the break we had more than 95 sixth-year students on Google Hangouts at one time. I would have scarcely believed it possible a few months ago.

However, while we have kept the show on the road, you can ask any student, teacher or parent and they will say it is not the same. We worry more about our students for whom school is a safe haven and a place of order and welcome. It is not the same as being in school and the personal and emotional connection that comes from meeting each other every day. Things take twice as long to get done and it places a strain on every party. This strain is felt more so by students studying for Junior & Leaving Cert in particular.

Last Friday’s announcement about the Leaving Cert proceeding in late July/ August was neither clear nor directive. Happening when it did, halfway through the Easter Holidays, before a bank holiday weekend was poorly timed. I don’t think it succeeded in putting students’ and parents’ minds at ease. For teachers, it means Twitter and WhatsApp speculation has been flying around since Saturday evening as to what the plans for the remainder of the year will be.

It has placed our Leaving Cert students in limbo, extending their state of anxiety rather than relieving it.

While teachers will be willing to help, there are many issues with the ‘plan’ that it has caused more problems. Ask any teacher and they will list easily to you their concerns... How do you manage social distancing? Will there be Teaching Union agreement? What plans can the State Exams Commission make in such a short timeframe? If normality has returned, what about students, staff, family holidays? What about the students who will need summer jobs to raise money for college etc.Think about it further and

Questions arise as to how do you have teachers come back two weeks early in July just for their 6th years and not the rest of the school? What about the other year groups? When do teachers take holidays if they are to continue teaching until then? Do we delay the start of the new academic year? Will this then have an impact next year also on every other Year Group even though they aren’t the ones sitting Leaving Cert 2020? Is this fair on them? What happens in July/August if COVID-19 restrictions need to be reinstated?

American cultural anthropologist Simon Sinek, has written numerous books and presented TED talks on the importance of ‘Starting with Why’. He advocates that our ‘Why’ in life is our purpose and central to what we do. Well, what is the purpose of our schools? Why do we want students to go to school? To learn? To grow? To develop as people? To appreciate one another? To contribute to society?

I can’t think of a single educational philosophy that would say it is to achieve a certain amount of points? Yet, when it comes down to it, this can surely be the only reason we want the Leaving Cert to proceed ‘by hook or by crook’. Am I alone in thinking that this priority is wrong?

I would like to propose an alternative to the Minister for Education: we are in a crisis, so lead by being clear and telling your teachers what you need them to do this year, in their students’, and their country’s hour of need. Tell them you need them to provide predicted grades for their students, they already have ‘Mocks’ or ‘Pre’ results for their students and they know them from years of everyday contact. Tell them you trust their judgement. As a further fail-safe, tell your principals you expect them to check and stand over these predictive results. Tell the students and parents this is the safest and clearest thing we can do this year.

Then, tell the universities that they are to offer 90% of university course places based on the points accumulated from these grades and hold 10% of places over until October. Let the universities then decide whether they want to run matriculation exams or entrance interviews for the remainder of the places in August/September for those students that felt they could have got more than these predictive grades or those students that didn’t get the course that they wanted.

Then tell the Leaving Cert class of 2020 that you have spent five or six years in secondary school, that you recognise that, that we all know how great they can be and you don’t want them or their parents to be worried or stressed about how disadvantaged they are by Covid-19 and events outside your control. Tell them this is the fairest for all students, of all academic ability and needs. Show them that the ‘Why’ of school is not a points race. Then let the next year’s academic year proceed as normally as possible.

This would be difficult, and, by telling the country this is what he expects of his teachers, the Minister could risk the Teaching Unions saying ‘no’. They have long resisted marking their own students but these are exceptional times. I believe over all else the ‘Why’ for teachers is their students and I think that because these are exceptional times there is a willingness to take exceptional action.

Seán Twomey is principal of St Aloysius’ College, Carrigtwohill, County Cork.