THE controversy over the mislaid marks for Leaving Cert student craft work has highlighted, once again, the overall problems with art as a Leaving Cert subject.

Art teachers are very concerned at the slow pace of reform in this subject. "It is a very sore issue", says Andrina Wafer, president of the Art Teachers Association. "The revised Junior Cert, which is a very exciting course and involves no written work at all has been in operation for five years, yet it looks as if it could be the year 2000 before we get an updated Leaving Cert syllabus."

The problem, she says, is that students take a very practical applied art course at Junior Cert level, but then have to change and pursue a more academic course in the Leaving Cert. One of the main problems is the long history of art course which accounts for a large block of Leaving Cert marks.

Tom Shortt, art teacher at Scoil Carmel in Limerick, explains that "it covers the whole of history from the earliest up to modern times." It is impossible for students to cover the whole period. Several consecutive centuries did not feature in recent exam papers, he says. "So a student could have a very good knowledge of art history for a particular period, yet not be able to do - the questions."

Art teachers would like to see this paper broken down into smaller historical periods, limits set to the periods to be covered, or questions on each period guaranteed. Work is currently being done on a new Leaving Cert art syllabus by the art course committee of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). However, this is a drawn out procedure, there are several other Leaving Cert subjects in the queue ahead of art and it will probably be the year 2000 before students are sitting exams in the new course.

In a statement issued after a meeting last week, the executive of the ATA described itself as "profoundly disappointed" that proposals for interim change put forward by the association have been rejected by the Department of Education.

Wafer explains that the association is very happy that the NCCA is working on a new syllabus, but that the time lag is so long that teachers feel strongly that some tinkering with the existing syllabus could be undertaken in the meantime.

"The delay in putting a new syllabus in place is an injustice to students," the association said in its statement. Students find the Junior Cert course really exciting, says Wafer, and are very frustrated when this approach is not continued in the Leaving Cert.

In the Junior Cert there is no written exam; students' art, craft and design work is displayed in the school by the art teacher and examiners then visit the school and assess the work in situ. Ideally, says Tom Shortt, the same procedure should be followed for the Leaving Cert - certainly for the craft work section. Tony Deffley, president of the Teachers Union of Ireland, says that he would favour having Leaving Cert craft work assessed "locally". Would that mean in the school? "Well, it could be a local centre or, yes, it could be a school."

The problem is that the whole issue of school based assessment is under review and the unions have not agreed to such assessment for most subjects in the Junior Cert yet.

There are understandable difficulties. Helen Commiskey, former president of the ATA, points to the huge amount of additional work generated for art teachers in assembling and displaying the Junior Cert art, craft and design work for the examiners; the teacher also needs to be present during the assessment.

"And it's not just the three dimensional pieces," Commiskey emphasises. "You have to assemble all of their two dimensional work, place it in special envelopes and ensure they are correctly numbered etc - and sometimes they only send the envelopes a few days before the assessment, so you spend hours after class working on them."

It is issues like this which worry the teachers' unions who, as a general policy, would like to see remuneration for teachers in return for school based assessment. Though, in school assessment of practical projects does already exist in both construction studies and engineering in the Leaving Cert. The ASTI, in particular, has concerns about school based assessment.

Art teachers end up doing a lot of additional unpaid work. For example, they are required to be in the school on the days of the Leaving Cert art exams - however these are not counted as working days nor is there any payment. The problem here is that most exam supervisors know nothing about art understandably, as they are not art teachers. But they are supervising students doing pottery, batik, watercolours, drawing, life sketching etc, which involve very technical matters - and a lot of materials. There have been controversies over the years about the behaviour of the odd supervisor.

So art teachers have to deal with the queries and needs of the supervisor and ensure that all the necessary materials are to hand. Art teachers have lobbied for years to have life sketching and the still life imaginative composition practicals moved back to Easter - which is when the craftwork practicals take place.

The argument here is that it is difficult for students to paint an "imaginative composition" in the middle of a string of highly stressful written exams in other subjects. On one occasion, they had actually got agreement from the Department of Education for such a move, but it was vetoed by the ASTI.

Wafer would argue for some interim improvements pending the arrival of the new course. This year the Department went some way down this road by announcing that there would be illustrations on the art history paper for the first time. However, Tom Shortt points out that there was no explanation of the nature of these illustrations drawings or full colour reproductions for example?

"In no other subject is such a fundamental change made to an exam without prior notice to schools."

However, the ATA now happily reports that the Department has agreed to issue sample papers shortly, thus giving teachers an idea of what they have in mind.

Marking of Leaving Cert art has also long been a matter of controversy. It has been erratic on occasion," Tom Shortt admits. But then art teachers also acknowledge that art is subjective in the way that, say, an English essay is, and maintaining a common standard is not as easy as it is in chemistry, for example.

The Minister announced recently that she is making the detailed marking schemes for all Leaving Cert subjects available to all teachers; some have already been issued and art will follow. Shortt welcomes this. "It will certainly improve matters as far as teachers are concerned. Up to now it has been difficult to know what exactly the examiners were looking for."

Everyone is keen to encourage more students to take art, despite the problems. The boom in third level art/design courses and in jobs in the area of design is raising the profile of art as a school subject. The ATA is confident that the Price Waterhouse enquiry into exam marking will identify any shortcomings, and it is are satisfied that the Minister intends to implement its recommendations.

Meanwhile, according to the ATA statement: "Students taking Leaving Cert art can feel confident that they will get a just and careful consideration of their work."