The reality facing decision-makers over the likely format of the Leaving Cert in 2022 began to dawn at a meeting on the evening of January 24th at Government Buildings.
Support for a hybrid approach – allowing students a choice between written exams and teachers’ estimated grades – was building momentum.
Students’ representatives produced a survey showing an overwhelming majority wanted a choice given the scale of disruption experienced due to Covid-19. Parents and principals’ representatives rowed in behind calls for change, and Opposition parties were demanding a hybrid option.
Within Government there was a determination to try to respond compassionately given the masses of emails backbenchers were receiving on the topic.
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But the meeting between Coalition leaders Micheál Martin, Leo Varadkar and Eamon Ryan and senior education officials – including Department of Education secretary general Seán Ó Foghlú and Minister for Education Norma Foley – heard of a major stumbling block.
The absence of Junior Cert exam data for about 25 per cent of the class of 2022 – students who did not complete transition year and did not sit the cancelled exams in 2020 – would make it highly challenging to standardise teachers' estimated grades in a robust way.
Fairness
Standardisation is crucial: it helps ensure consistency and fairness in results by pulling down excessive grades and pulling up under-estimated grades. Without it, for example, there is nothing to prevent some schools awarding top grades to most students while others play by the rules.
There was a recognition that the backdrop to the Leaving Cert debate this year was radically different to the past two
“This is crucial data . . . the absence of it for a quarter of the cohort would have seriously weakened the accredited grades process,” says one source who was present at the meeting.
“It didn’t make it impossible, but we wouldn’t have had the confidence you need for a high-stakes exam like the Leaving Cert.”
The only “robust” pathway towards filling this Junior Cert gap was using school historical data, a controversial measure also known as “school profiling”. This involves examining a school’s performance in the exams over a number of years and using it to help predict grade profiles.
However, this measure was abandoned by the Government in the 2020 Leaving Cert in the face of claims that it would penalise students attending schools in disadvantaged areas.
Officials conceded that using this data this year would revive fresh concerns along the same lines; political leaders accepted that it would be highly problematic.
When The Irish Times broke the news about the need for school historical data for a hybrid model, Labour’s education spokesman Aodhán Ó Ríordáin said his party would consider a motion of no confidence in Foley. “This needs to go back in the elitist box it came in,” he said on Twitter.
Backdrop
There was also a recognition that the backdrop to the Leaving Cert debate this year was radically different to the past two. Schools were open, other jurisdictions were planning a return to normal exams and normality seemed to be around the corner.
“We knew we could run the exams successfully and safely . . . there was an improving health situation and a high proportion of 17-18 year olds with access to vaccinations . . . they have their advantages and disadvantages, but exams are more equitable than estimated marks,” one senior source said.
A dilemma facing the Government is how to begin the process of deflating grade inflation
This narrowed down the options to a more traditional Leaving Cert, albeit with fewer questions and more choice.
As announced on Tuesday, students will have exams that are “radically different” to normal times. Significantly, the overall set of students’ results in the aggregate for this year will be no lower than last year. This means the record-breaking grades achieved last year – about 60 CAO points higher than a normal year – will be replicated this year.
In fact, grades could climb even higher. This is because the exams won’t be marked according to a bell curve, as happens in normal years. If the results are even higher than last year, they will stand.
A dilemma facing the Government is how to begin the process of deflating grade inflation. Does it embark on a “glide path” back towards more normal levels, as is due to happen in the UK, or have we reached a new normal of high grades?
These are likely matters for another day. As for now, the Government hopes the changes it has announced will be seen as a fair pathway to allow students complete their second level education and progress to the next chapter of their lives.
