The Department of Education turned down a recommendation from the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment English course committee, which designed the Junior Cert English syllabus, for an oral test and a portfolio of work to be included in the course's examination.

This is revealed in an article in the latest issue of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland's education review, Issues in Education, by Tom Mullins, the NCCA's education officer for English and a lecturer at UCC. The Minister, Micheal Martin, has now asked the NCCA to examine the possibility of including oral tests in the Junior Cert English exam.

Mullins says that, despite the success of the new Junior Cert English syllabus, "there is an anomaly in having an open syllabus assessed only by a terminal written examination".

He says that a 1992 study of the impact of the Junior Cert on schools, School Communities and Change, had shown that a high percentage of teachers favoured introducing "orals, aurals and projects" into the assessment procedures.

Another teacher, Joe Coy, from Tuam CBS, Co Galway, writes that "the biggest obstacle to teaching the Junior Cert course is the Junior Cert exam. A fluid course is treated by a static exam. Even the most idealistic teacher has to keep an eye on the exam. At the end of the day the teacher is judged on one criterion only - the number of A, B and C grades. To achieve these much sought-after letters, exam technique becomes all-important.

"As for listening and oral skills - forget them. They are not tested or graded so therefore they are of no `value'. The Inter Cert may be dead but its spirit lives on. The corpse has been resuscitated by some teachers and a timid Department of Education. Instead of pressing ahead with an oral/aural component to the new exam the Department has postponed the implementation of its own plan."

The most successful innovation in the English syllabus has been the introduction of media studies, says Mullins. "Teachers find that students are frequently more culturally equipped than themselves to cope with the media. It is because of student enthusiasm for the media that there is an urgent need for teachers to be given the in-service that can turn this enthusiasm to worthwhile educational ends."

Media studies "should develop in students the capacity to see through the manipulative tendencies of the media in all their forms and equip them with the language and skills to resist their powerful voices. Such an approach would give English a much more explicit political role in our democracy than it previously had and emphasise its centrality in the curriculum in a new and significant way."

Mullins says that poetry and the short story are declining elements in Junior Cert English. Many teachers feel "de-skilled and trapped" by the textbooks they use. What is needed now is "a plethora of interesting anthologies" which will "re-energise these areas". Unless this happens there is a danger that the Junior Cert syllabus "will be reduced to a predominantly fundamentalist model which would be a betrayal of one of its central aspirations, the devlopment of the students' creative encounter with literature".

The journal also contains an article on the new Junior Cert Elementary Programme - which will be taken by around 1900 students this year - by the coordinator of its support service, Aileen Cassidy. It is aimed at students who may drop out or do badly in the Junior Cert, and will therefore be faced with the prospect of permanent unemployment.

It uses a "student profile system", to ensure that students gain credit for a wider range of achievements - including literacy, numeracy, personal and social development - than those included in the exam.

"One of the principal aims of the programme is that the students gain confidence through regular positive feedback and so develop a much more productive attitude towards school, ultimately leading to their sitting the Junior Cert examination."

Arguably the most important aspect of this curriculum, says Cassidy, is "personal and social development, which enhances self-esteem and the ability to relate well to people".

She relates her own experience of the programme in a community school in Jobstown, an area of west Tallaght in Dublin with an unemployment rate of over 70 per cent. Before the programme, a class of 16 starting in first year would have eight students or fewer remaining in third year.

However, of the 18-pupil class which enrolled in 1994, 16 sat the Junior Cert very successfully two years later, and the majority are now reported to be doing well in Transition Year, Leaving Cert or Leaving Cert Applied.