What is going on with bizarre grade deflation in the junior cycle?

Remember when students had to be warned that their good Junior Cert results were no guarantee of similar success at Leaving Cert because the senior cycle examination was so much harder?

The Leaving Cert is still much harder. The new junior cycle exams are arguably much easier than the old Junior Cert, given that only three subjects, Irish, English and Maths are examined at higher and ordinary level, while everything else is examined at a common level in one exam per subject that lasts just two hours.

Yet a distinction (90 per cent) is vanishingly rare in the new junior cycle, while far higher numbers achieve H1s (which are also worth 90 per cent) at Leaving Cert.

Let’s forget for a moment the rampant grade inflation since the pandemic. The careers guidance website Careers Portal has a wonderful graphic where you can flip quickly between LC results from 2023 and previous years. H1s are represented by red and the sea of red has expanded every year since 2020.

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This year, 4 per cent of JC students got a distinction in science, while in pre-grade inflation 2019, the numbers of H1s for LC Biology, Chemistry and Physics were 7.7, 13.1 and 10.8 respectively

But if you go back before grade inflation to 2019, results are still inexplicably higher at Leaving Cert. At junior cycle, Italian was a complete outlier this year, with 9.5 per cent of students achieving a distinction. In 2019, 17.5 per cent achieved an H1 in Leaving Cert Italian while in 2023, 42.5 per cent got an H1.

But there has been more than enough commentary about grade inflation at Leaving Cert. What on earth is going on with grade deflation at junior cycle? The percentage of distinctions ranges between 2 and 4.6 per cent in most subjects. The difference between junior and senior cycles is well illustrated in science, which is examined as one subject in Junior cycle and as a number of different subjects in Leaving Cert. This year, 4 per cent of JC students got a distinction in science, while in pre-grade inflation 2019, the numbers of H1s for LC Biology, Chemistry and Physics were 7.7, 13.1 and 10.8 respectively.

This was not the case in the past. For example, a graphic of Junior Cert results from 2018 shows vastly higher proportions of As (not an exact equivalent to a distinction, but close) than the measly number of distinctions given today.

There is clearly a policy to cluster results around the merit mark in the new junior cycle, that is, a mark between 55 and 75. This is true both in the terminal examinations and the classroom-based assessments or CBAs, which, confusingly, have a different set of descriptors again. In professional development for teachers regarding CBAs it was emphasised that most students should be getting “in line with expectations”, roughly a C grade in old money. This is very odd because CBAs were meant to allow students to shine in ways other than the traditional written terminal exams.

It is no secret that successive ministers for education, with Ruairí Quinn the most vociferous, wanted to get rid of the Junior Cert/cycle completely. It was partly a money-saving exercise but it was also ideological, a move away from traditional methods not only of assessment but of learning.

[ Leaving Cert: Revised reform plans do not include teacher-based assessment ]

[ Q&A: What do latest Leaving Cert reform plans mean for students, teachers and parents? ]

The alleged compromise was to make it a low-stakes exam where students would be at the heart of the educational process.

Far from succeeding in this aim, the attempt to de-emphasise the importance of terminal exams instead raised the stress level associated with them. For example, as the junior cycle was introduced in tranches of subjects, it was commonplace for sample exam papers not to be available in time for teachers to familiarise themselves or students with them. This raised anxiety levels among students.

Research recently released by the University of Limerick (UL) acknowledges that students, while they enjoy the research for CBAs and the innovative learning methods of the new junior cycle, also report “experiencing significant stress with regard to their everyday workloads and struggled to balance homework, CBAs and study for tests and exams”.

Many teachers also believe that the common level papers are not working for most students, being too challenging for some while the lack of any choice of questions and severe time constraints are frustrating for others

The same UL research shows that at the beginning of the process of junior cycle reform, teachers found the lack of resources and practical examples frustrating, as was the lack of clarity, focus and inability to answer teachers’ questions evident in some of the earlier professional development courses.

Many teachers also believe that the common level papers are not working for most students, being too challenging for some while the lack of any choice of questions and severe time constraints are frustrating for others.

Another message is loud and clear from the UL research – for teachers, the biggest barriers to reform are lack of time, lack of resources and the scale of the changes.

Anecdotally for students, the knowledge that they are far less likely to be rewarded for hard work with higher grades is also a significant barrier.

Senior cycle reform is coming and most teachers feel some trepidation. Currently, we have junior cycle reform with some good aspects, especially in relation to student-centred learning. But other aspects are far less laudable, not least the common-level papers that are not fit for purpose and the bizarre distribution of higher grades. Let us not make the same mistakes with the senior cycle, please.