Sir, – The Minister for Education and the Cabinet are to be congratulated for their very brave decision to forge ahead with an exam-only Leaving Certificate: brave because they courageously disregard the fact that this year’s cohort of students will be voting for the first time in the next general election. These future voters will be more likely to support political candidates who expressed empathy for them at one of the most important points in their lives and who advocated for a hybrid model, or for reform or for consideration for students’ mental health in extraordinary circumstances.
This potential electorate is having its range of political opinions shaped right now, and it will soon be too late for those in power now to wonder how and why college-age voters are seduced by “populist” policies.
Courageous? Yes, Minister. – Yours, etc,
RAYMOND SHEEHAN,
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Las Palmas,
Spain.
Sir, – For the Department of Education to rule against the hybrid Leaving Certificate for this year is shortsighted, not only because it is the model preferred by the students but also because it is a system that potentially is less toxic to the mental health of students as well as providing for a fairer assessment of their scholastic abilities.
To continuously promote our traditional Leaving Certificate as the gold standard is to ignore how it favours the middle classes and especially for those who can afford extra tuition, either privately or in private tuition centres, and indeed for those who have parents who are second-level teachers.
Perhaps not so well known is that the hybrid model is standard for the Scandinavian countries. Their continuous assessment covers the practical work, work in class, homework, tests, project work and group work and provides an overall grade for each of the subjects studied by the students. These grades are added to the examination grades achieved from their bi-annual internal exams and from their final formal exams. The formal exams cover only three of their subjects and to enhance fairness they are randomly selected by the external examination board and with very little notice given to the students. While applying such comprehensive criteria would undoubtedly not be possible for this year, surely some mix of continuous and formal examinations should be possible. However, should some form of a hybrid model fail to be adopted this year, it is to be hoped that it will be given serious consideration in the years to come as reform of the Leaving Certificate is long overdue. – Yours, etc,
Dr MONA O’MOORE,
Sandycove,
Co Dublin
Sir, – Your lead story "Colleges warn over 'cruel' levels of grade inflation" (News, February 2nd) makes several important points.
Some of the brightest in the class of 2022 who would walk into the course of their choice in a normal year will lose out because grade inflation will mean that course places will be awarded by random selection. That is cruel. Students from earlier years will find that their hard-earned grades are a devalued currency when competing with the fantastic grades awarded to the classes of 2021 and 2022. That is cruel.
What is getting less attention is that massive grade inflation and random selection will mean that students will be awarded places on courses where they can be expected to struggle. That, too, is cruel and will be a problem not only for these students but also for their third-level instructors.
The promise of a “post-marking intervention” to secure that results will be no lower than last year’s means that these cruelties will continue and that the necessary actions to bring us back to a normal level of results are being kicked down the road. And when that process begins there will be further injustices as the normalised grades of the students of the future struggle to compete with those with inflated grades who choose to defer.
Seven students secured eight H1 grades in 2019 when we last had the traditional anonymous assessment. Readers will recall the newspaper photographs which accompanied news of this rare achievement. It would have required a very large page or very small photographs to do justice to the class of 2021 when there were 119 students with eight H1s.
Teachers are only human. It’s clearly too much to ask them to be fair in assessing their students’ work when, in doing so, they are indirectly assessing their own. – Yours, etc,
PAT O’BRIEN,
Dublin 6.
Sir, – As news breaks about a semi-traditional Leaving Cert in June, I’m upset that my son isn’t upset. Where have I gone wrong? – Yours, etc,
DAVID CURRAN,
Knocknacarra,
Galway.