The Leaving Cert points system has to be reformed - but the problem is how to frame a fairer way of selecting students for third level, writes Emmet Oliver, Education Correspondent
Coffee cups. Empty cans of Red Bull. Discarded crisp bags. Chewing gum wrappers. Bottles of Tipp-Ex. Paper clips. Calculators. Compasses and, most crucially, two matchsticks to keep those eyes open after two o'clock in the morning.
You can be sure this assortment of dispiriting items are strewn over almost 60,000 home-study desks across the country right now. Also strewn across that desk may be the exhausted figure of your 17- or 18-year-old son or daughter.
The intense run-up to the Leaving Cert ordeal has already started. Students have to have their CAO forms in Galway by February 1st. Nobody really likes it. Nobody really admires it. Nobody really enjoys it. But still it comes around each year, virtually unchanged from the year before.
Educational purists glibly describe the Leaving Cert as an "assessment tool", but to students it means a whole lot more. It means entering into a surreal process where a collection of two- to three-hour papers in early summer often decide how you are going to spend the rest of your life.
The Irish points system is a curious creation. Set up in the early 1970s as a way to select students, when there were more applicants than places, this neat and innocuous idea has grown into something of a monster in the past two decades. But we have almost become used to the annual jamboree that is the "points race". Used to tearful students emerging from school with that scrap of paper in their hand. Used to the almost cloying radio interviews with the 600-point student who just cannot choose between the medical school at Trinners or the one at UCD. But is there another way to do it?
Well, yes actually. Everybody seems to agree on that. Education Minister Noel Dempsey. The main body in charge of curriculum and assessment in our schools, the NCCA. The Opposition parties. Teachers. Parents. Pupils. Every one of the education partners says we must do something. We must reform it. We must improve it. But . . . maybe not this year, folks.
Well, things may be changing after all. Why? Like much these days, it is a question of numbers.
The youth population is falling. The number of people between 18 and 25 is expected to drop by about 20 per cent between now and the end of the decade. In relation to the points system, this will be like letting the air out of tyre which has been bursting at the seams.
There will be fewer students chasing more places. In other words, the high point of the points system in the mid- to late-1980s, when queues of young people encircled The Irish Times for news of the cut-off points, are well and truly over. The whole system is going to cool off in a big way.
This means there is a chance for reform. A document, released just before Christmas by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), suggested that reform is very much needed. It said the current Leaving Cert appeared, to many in the education world, to have a narrow focus on academic achievement.
It suggested several possible ways forward. The most interesting of these was the idea of giving recognition to other disciplines such as sport, drama, PE, project work, debating and work experience, to name just a few.
This might seem absurd to traditionalists who favour sticking strictly to the three Rs (reading, wRiting and aRithmetic), but the feeling in Britain and the US is that other skills should be recognised.
But could they be recognised for points? Why not? The NCCA has already managed to make religion an examinable subject at second-level, so there is every chance that in a few years a good footballer might be able use his or her skills on the pitch for points.
The success of the Leaving Cert vocational and Leaving Cert applied programmes are acknowledged by virtually everyone.
There is a strong suggestion that the better elements of these programmes - such as their emphasis on team working and work experience - can be incorporated into the mainstream Leaving Cert.
Other groups are also piling on the pressure for change. Bodies in various industrial sectors are also fed up with the current points system.
The Institution of Engineers in Ireland wants change. The Irish Computer Society (which represents senior IT professionals) recently called for the points system to be radically altered. It made the observation that the points system had killed the love of learning and created instead a mad dash for points, usually to be found in so-called "soft touch" subjects which deliver a generous bounty of honours each year.
One of the world's leading authorities on universities and third level education, Dr Malcolm Skillbeck, has criticised the Irish reliance on terminal exams.
"The widespread use of public examinations at the end of secondary school for purposes of screening and selection has had as one of its effects a narrowing of our understanding of what people can and do attain in life," he said in a report two years ago.
Minister Dempsey, who has children in third-level education, has also spoken publicly about some of the more unedifying elements of the current system. But how to frame a fairer method of selecting students is what has everyone baffled. As is obvious from the accompanying panel, easy solutions are not necessarily at hand.
Systems used in Britain and the US have major problems, possibly larger than those in Ireland. So a good old Irish solution to an Irish problem might be what emerges in the end.
The NCCA is to consult further and then draw up a final document on developments at senior cycle. Many people in the education community hope its final recommendations will be radical proposals that keep the essential fairness of the current system, but broaden its emphasis beyond merely the traditional academic pursuits.
However, the colleges ultimately control how students are chosen for third level and, with numbers falling, colleges are more prepared than ever to listen to new ideas.
Last year, many colleges did not require any points for some of their courses; students simply needed a few passes to cover basic requirements. So, rather than any specific reforms, the sheer lack of numbers may make the points system all but inoperable in large parts of the third-level system.
Of course nobody is going to walk onto a course in medicine with a few passes, but for a lot of other courses the points system is no longer going to be a major barrier. With numbers tumbling, colleges are likely to dilute the points system further, rather than to reinforce it. With new thinking on the Leaving Cert emerging all the time and colleges having to face up to painful new realities, things could get very interesting in the years ahead.
But for this year's unfortunate 60,000 Leaving Cert students, I'm afraid it's back to the desk.
• College Choice, a special supplement with The Irish Times next Tuesday, will guide students as they consider the options for their CAO applications