The Secret Teacher: This year’s Leaving Certs are the hardest workers we’ve ever known

The current focus in Government offices is on what is of national importance, the Leaving Certificate.

It falls to leadership energy in schools to act more locally. School leaders who have their ears to the ground have access to crucial channels of communication which those in higher positions have no direct line to, despite their power in other ways. What is happening for students is evident in schools and via communication with their parents and their teachers.

It is abundantly clear that this will be no typical summer term in Irish schools. Young people are naturally still hopeful that school traditions for their particular year group will be saved. This simply may not be the case. We all know from experience how draining a lack of clarity is and there is more certainty in cancellation than there is in dithering.

Autonomy from school to school is overrated in a pandemic. It is fair to say that much of what typically happens in schools from now until their summer closure is in doubt. Is this the elephant in the room during meetings at the highest levels?

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The Irish Times view on the Leaving Cert: clarity for anxious students

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Parents will be asked to sign school Covid-19 forms

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If so, it places an entirely avoidable strain on everyone on the ground. Not only will individual management teams have to go through the process of making “local” decisions, but they will then be subject to comparisons with other schools who may have decided more “favourably”.

I’m in no doubt that principals phone each other to seek guidance or just to mull over something challenging, but that isn’t an adequate support system for the ongoing Covid situation. It is a reasonable and effective approach for an isolated incident which arises unexpectedly. It does not make sense to leave our dedicated and hardworking school leaders at the mercy of each other’s best guess when all schools in the country must navigate the same territory.

When we leave school we bring with us the lived experience of that school's traditions

Last year it may have felt premature to address events that typically take place weeks in the future; now that we are nearly a year on, it’s safe to say that a national approach to events of this summer term can and should be addressed.

Being “in it together” is in large part demonstrated by living one story. Despite much controversy a lot of good came out of schools being open for the first full term of the year. Even if numbers soared as 2020 came to a close, the reprieve from ongoing lockdown and online learning had made for a massively positive first term of the academic year. The rigid national adherence to schools staying open “no matter what” proves that such an approach is possible. We now need similar attention to the small print of this summer term, as what it contains is hugely significant for youngsters.

When we leave school we bring with us the lived experience of that school’s traditions: TY trips (perhaps even abroad), school musicals, inter-class or year competitions, sports days, teacher-student duels and so on. At that age school social events are synonymous with milestones. Memories of and stories from graduation celebrations long outlive the nights themselves. They come in two distinct categories: the formal framed photograph and the messy shenanigans at 4am. A fully respectable night which starts by including parents and teachers invariably turns messy and informal by the end. These are rites of passage and students long for them. This pandemic means that they must mourn the absence of something they have long looked ahead to, and that many before them have had.

As we navigate our way into a post-pandemic world we will need new sensitivity around words and phrases like “the Leaving Cert”. In years to come when the Leaving Cert classes of 2020 and 2021 refer to their school-leaving they won’t be talking about the same (academic or social) experience as those who preceded or followed them. An extension of that is that this year’s first year college students barely qualify as such, so different is their college experience.

The upheavals of the last two academic years mean that thorough reforms are required now more than ever

This year’s Leaving Certs are perhaps the hardest working cohort we have ever known as a direct result of Calculated Grades featuring in their vocabulary. They have kept their heads down and their noses clean like no other school-leavers I have ever known, and this must be reflected in any bell curve they are subjected to. The enforced distancing has served the students who want to learn well in many ways.

The current Transition Years didn't sit a Junior Cert, and many schools have not found their way to anything like the usual structure and buzz. Students have naturally been slow to adjust their perception of Transition Year and embrace a fully academic approach. As teachers we have not provided that; we too have struggled to adjust – and anyway we have two years ahead in which to prepare for the Leaving Cert. What will those who have not been formally assessed at the end of the Junior Cycle be like in fifth year? We have never before met such a cohort. They have been uniquely so off-task for so long in terms of academic work.

There are similar new particularities for each year group if we work our way down the school structure, and these are now integral to what that generation brings forward. While these features won’t necessarily define them, their impact will be evident and we must be ready.

Local adjustments and support for students must suffice for now, and perhaps be limited to less academic aspects of their school lives. The upheavals of the last two academic years mean that thorough reforms are required now more than ever. Given all that students have been through and missed out on, it is time their actual needs became a matter of national importance.