PRESIDENT'S LOG:What we want from education may differ from what we expect – or what we need, writes FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI

RECENTLY I was chatting to a group of intelligent, well- educated and well-meaning people, all of whom have one or more children in Dublin secondary schools. What, I asked them, do they hope these schools will deliver for their children?

I was hoping for answers that involved pedagogy, civilised values, knowledge development, life skills, the thrill of science and the arts – that kind of thing.

I didn’t get any of it.

What they want are the highest possible CAO points. Nothing more.

We really have come to treat education as a board game, where you have to make the right moves and gather points. It is entirely tactical, with almost no intellectual angle.

You doubt that? Well, I asked my companions what specific expectations they had of the syllabus in English literature. For example, how much Shakespeare should Leaving Cert students be doing? And what level of scientific knowledge should they have acquired by the time they take their exams?

Oh yes, they said, they wanted Shakespeare.

Was it because he developed and extended what we now call the English language, and because he disseminated intellectual ideas from the classics to his own day?

Not at all. It was because this had always been a central part of the syllabus and students know how to prepare for it to get high points.

And science? No, no demand there, because it was too difficult to get high points. Yes, but didn’t we need more scientists in Ireland? Maybe, maybe not. In any case, there were lots of other schools that could focus on that.

It was an extraordinary conversation, because any hint of principle was drowned under the wave of only one thing that mattered: points. That was it.

I’ve long had grave reservations about the CAO points system and its influence on the way in which students work for the Leaving Cert. This conversation strongly reinforced those reservations. The social and material ambitions of parents are pushing their children into working methods and career choices that are of very doubtful value for the wider society.

The points system is turning the final stages of secondary school into a transaction in which students acquire what they are led to believe is the currency that will resource their later lives. Universities, as the owners of the CAO project, are allowing this to happen.

As a country, we have known for some time that our education system is involved in a constant struggle between educational values and the tactical manoeuvres of its stakeholders. It is now 10 years since the Commission on the Points System issued its final report, in which it argued that the Leaving Cert should involve a “broad and balanced curriculum” that should “enable young people to benefit from a wide range of educational experiences”.

Nevertheless, the commission concluded that admission to third-level institutions should, for school leavers, be based entirely on Leaving Cert results, and that the points system was the best way of measuring these results.

The commission’s ambitions for a broader curriculum and more nuanced assessment were wholly at odds with its support for the existing mechanisms for measuring performance.

For decades we have known that our national prosperity depends on one thing more than all the rest combined: the quality of our education system. We have no natural resources worth mentioning, we don’t have what would be regarded as an attractive climate, we’re not known for our fine wines or gourmet foods. What we have is an opportunity to develop and maintain a reputation for educational excellence. That is what encourages international investment in Ireland and provides opportunities for our people.

We are putting all this at risk by thinking that we can have educational excellence without any educational values.

We encourage young people to cram information from a prepared syllabus and to make tactical judgements about learning, thereby getting them to adopt habits that will not work for them in a university or prepare them for professional life. We encourage them to make subject choices not on the basis of aptitude (and much less, national needs), but on the basis of points. And although we know in our heart of hearts that all this is not right, we just can’t bring ourselves to reform the system.

Education should be a journey of discovery and awareness, of challenge and judgement, of understanding and appreciation. It should not be a tactical campaign resembling the moves on a board game. As a country, it is time for us to think again about whether we are getting this right.

For us in the universities, the place to start is the CAO, which we own and control. Let us ask some serious questions about what the points system is doing, and then let us act.

Ferdinand von Prondzynski is president of Dublin City University