Letter to the Editor: Leaving Cert grading system is not level playing pitch

The superimposition of "school league tables" upon the current swiftly improvised predicted grades system for State examinations is, as far as I can see, constitutionally infirm. I would urge the Government to take a close look at this. Because it is something which will likely be litigated before the superior courts in the autumn.

It is not difficult to envisage the striving honest student in a putatively "less excellent" school who will lose out on a precious college place because of this opaque and invidious "variable" currently being injected into our State Examinations equation.

Article 40.1 of the Constitution states as follows:

All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law.

This shall not be held to mean that the State shall not in its enactments have due regard to differences of capacity, physical and moral, and of social function.

If we are to teach our children anything, we should teach them that all of them are equal before the law. They are not different "physically, morally or in social function".

In short, "past returns are no guide to future performance" - as the stock markets never tire of telling us. The Leaving Certificate's greatest strength has always been its level pitch. The goals are moving and the field is tilting.

Michael Deasy

Carrigart

Co Donegal