The Junior Certificate contains many of the shortcomings of the old Intermediate Certificate and needs to be reformed urgently, the group representing the State's 250 vocational schools has said.
The "over-emphasis" on a single end-of-year examination and a lack of practical work at Junior Certificate level were highlighted as major shortcomings by the Irish Vocational Education Association (IVEA).
"The swing away from solely using a terminal exam at Junior Certificate level is crucial," the association recommended. It has submitted its views to the current Junior Certificate review being co-ordinated by the National Council of Curriculum and Assessment.
The group said that, "progressively", Junior Certificate subjects should be "assessed internally" in schools with proper quality assurance techniques developed at national level. The IVEA said teachers should be given in-service training in assessment techniques to bring this about.
The move to get teachers to assess pupils as part of the Junior or Leaving Certificate has been fiercely resisted by teacher unions in recent years.
The IVEA also called for a new Junior Certificate Applied programme, which is currently available at Leaving Certificate level. It said such a course should focus on languages and practical subjects.
The association said that under the Education Welfare Bill, currently going through the Oireachtas, the compulsory school-leaving age would rise from 15 to 16. This meant the examination would be taken by most students before they left school. It said this meant an even greater need to reform the exam because it would be taken by people of different abilities.
The group said that despite the shortcomings the exam was a success in other areas. "The shift of emphasis in a number of subjects towards participation and reasoning by the student has been highly successful in a number of subjects, most especially art," it said.
However, it states that the Junior Certificate's "teaching and learning methodologies" could be altered to gain more from the "learner and the educator". The IVEA cites examples such as history. "The teaching and learning of medieval history could be broadened to allow students to embrace local history, model-building, project work and enable the subject to become more real," it said.