Sir, – I am amazed that throughout all the talk regarding Junior Cycle reform, nobody has thought to ask students, who have completed the examination in recent years, what they think of the exam.
As a sixth-year student, currently preparing for my Leaving Certificate, I do not think that two or three years of work should be tested in a three-hour exam. Continuous assessment is the way forward and work should be externally corrected.
The education system is so geared toward fact drilling and rote memorisation that students often exit with a head-full of dates and formulas, but without the ability to constructively think. If we readjusted the testing and educational system to focus on critical reasoning rather than memorisation, then even if we knew fewer facts off the top of our heads, we would be smarter overall. We would take a step towards doubt and a step towards thinking for ourselves. – Yours, etc, GAVIN COLL Carrickmines, Dublin 18. Sir, – Geraldine Mooney Simmie (Letters, December 1st) offers a caricature of the proposed Junior Cycle reform, claiming that it will “shatter the conception of education as a public good for all”. Dr Mooney associates the reform of the Junior Cycle with a European “liberal agenda” which seeks to reduce the role of the State in the delivery of public services.
This certainly does not do justice to the proposed Junior Cycle reform, which seeks to enhance the autonomy of teachers by giving them a greater role through school-based assessment of their students. This is very different from the education “reform” measures adopted in a number of developed countries, including Britain, which have promoted standardisation of courses, greater monitoring of teachers and more rigid official control over schools.
The current proposal by the Minister for Education involves the retention of a certificate issued by the State and allocates 60 per cent of the assessment to a final examination marked by the State Examinations Commission. This is hardly a revolutionary change – school-based assessment is already a reality in other areas of the post-primary system, notably the Leaving Certificate Applied programme.
Certainly there are real threats to the concept of education as a public good, but reform of the Junior Certificate is not one of them. Opponents of the reform should be careful what they wish for – it is rare for a government department to offer to share some of its powers and even more unusual for educators to make the case for State control of education. – Yours etc.
DR JOHN WALSH
School of Education,
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2. Sir, – It is alarming to read Prof Tom Collins’s apologia for getting rid of what he calls “brutal” external assessment from the second-level educational system (“Why Junior Cert reform is best for students’ education,” December 3rd).
He overlooks that what he calls “light touch external examiner oversight” would be totally inadequate to ensure the fairness of the second-level system.
Getting rid of an exam system, which has integrity, from second level is a backward step. It will leave it open to the influence of every power-monger from the over-ambitious, influential parent down.
If it leads to greater equality, as Prof Collins is arguing, it will only do so by bringing everyone down to the lowest common denominator. – Yours, etc, A LEAVY Sutton, Dublin 13.