Today is a day like no other for 57,000 students who completed the Leaving Cert in June. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the results they achieve this morning will help to shape their future.
While the vast majority of students have performed well, there are disturbing trends evident in the results. Failure rates at ordinary level continue to be high, especially in maths and in the science subjects. Almost one-in-five students failed ordinary level history.
It is also the case that few students taking ordinary level achieved very high grades, whereas these are relatively common in most higher level papers. The evidence suggests that ordinary level papers are set and marked as a kind of poor relation of the higher level papers. But this is grossly unfair to students who do not have the academic ability to take the higher level paper. The ordinary level paper should have an integrity in its own right. The State Examinations Commission, which was responsible for the Leaving Cert for the first time this year, needs to review this whole issue.
The commission deserves credit for running the exams smoothly, but it has still to explain how it managed to set questions in higher level chemistry and maths which presented unreasonable difficulties for students. The good news is that the results in both subjects are broadly in line with last year.
Last night, the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, welcomed the modest increase in students taking science subjects and he exhorted students who performed well in these areas to consider courses in science, engineering and technology. The results show that there is a cadre of exceptionally gifted science students. Over 25 per cent of higher level chemistry students and over 20 per cent of higher level biology students achieved grades A1 or A2.
But these figures disguise the overall trend. At ordinary level, the failure rates across the science subjects and in maths will remain a matter of deep concern. For reasons which have still to be fully explained, there is a huge swathe of students who consistently perform poorly in these subjects. The relatively tough marking of the papers is a factor - but it may not be the only one.
The poor results in science subjects will make it more difficult for them to attract students. It is easy to see the students' perspective here. Why should they invest time and energy in a subject when it is difficult to achieve a good result at ordinary level? There is an important national issue here - how to ensure that this State produces well-qualified people for our hi-tech based industry. It needs to be addressed with much greater urgency.
More generally, Mr Dempsey is promising radical reform to change what he describes as an exam rooted in the last century. But this task will not be easy; the exam enjoys huge public support, while any shift to continuous assessment could face opposition from some in the teacher unions.