Juniors Cert results down on last year in many subjects

RESULTS are down in many subjects for the 68,000 Junior Certificate students who collect their grades in schools throughout the State later today.

There were fewer A grades this year in higher level maths English, history, art/craft/design and science. However, there were more high grades in Irish, geography, French, German, business studies and home economics.

The most spectacular fall was in maths, where only half as many A grades were awarded compared to two years ago. Some 8.10 per cent of higher level students obtained an A, compared to 14 per cent last year and 16.2 per cent in 1994.

The assistant general secretary of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI), Mr John White, described the fall as "difficult to account for. There shouldn't be such a variation from one year to the next. The standard of the exam isn't supposed to vary and it would be extraordinary for the quality of pupils to vary so much".

Results in Irish continued to improve, with 11.6 per cent of students obtaining an A grade, compared to 9.7 last year and 8 per cent in 1994. The proportion of students failing the higher level paper also fell, to 3 per cent.

The number of students who sat the exam this year was 68,062, virtually unchanged from last year's total of 68,084. The figure for 1994 was 67,815.

The breakdown of grades supplied by the Department of Education reveals significant variations in the proportion of high grades awarded in different subjects. In English, only 5.7 per cent of students obtained an A, down from 6.1 last year; in history, 17.5 per cent got an A, and in art/craft/design, this figure reached 18.1 per cent.

The proportion of ordinary level students who obtained an E, F or no grade (NG) varied from 1.9 per cent in English, about 8 per cent in Irish, to 14.7 per cent in history.

In many ways, this set of results parallels the outcome of this year's Leaving Cert - down in history and English, up in Irish.

Although the results are being released slightly earlier this year, there were several calls yesterday for the date of publication to be brought even further forward. The president of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, Ms Alice Prendergast, said they should be released before the school term begins.

Ms Prendergast said the students receiving their results today have a wider range of senior cycle programmes to choose from than ever before. She called for more resources for the Leaving Cert Applied and Leaving Cert Vocational programmes.

The PD spokeswoman on education, Ms Helen Keogh, congratulated the students receiving their results today, but called for the "do or die" exam system to be replaced by practical tests and continuous assessment.

The president of the National Parents' Council - post-primary, Mr Sean Mitchell, appealed to the Minister for Education, Ms Breathnach, to abolish Junior Cert exam fees.