Sir, – While cancelling the August Leaving Cert exam was the correct decision, the predictive grade model that has been proposed is seriously flawed. Instead of basing such grades on only past recorded exams and tests – Junior Cert, senior cycle Christmas, summer and mock exams – the State Examinations Commission is allowing "homework and classwork" and "the level of performance the teacher has observed" to be considered in the awarding of grades.
This is ludicrous. It’s guaranteed to ensure that teachers will be put under student and parental pressure to increase grades. Furthermore, given the more subjective nature of this information, it also significantly increases the “legal vulnerabilities” of the process. A less charitable view might conclude that the Department and the Minister for Education have thrown schools and teachers under the bus. – Yours, etc,
SEAN KEAVENY,
Castleknock,
Dublin 15.
Sir, – Teachers are expected to calmly grade their students based on their previous work. Sounds fine. They are professionals who, even if they have not corrected State examinations, are familiar with the system. Let us assume that they set aside their personal feelings – after two to six years with their students they have got to know them and really want them to do well.
They then think about the grind schools and the fee-paying ones and the ones whose principals are intent on keeping their top places on the school league tables that newspapers are so fond of. What will principals of grind schools – who live or die by their results – be telling their staff? What of those schools whose old boys and girls have so much influence still on their alma mater?
Many teachers will suspect that at the very least these teachers will be encouraged to take a positive view of their pupils’ abilities, and to assign the highest possible grades without arousing the suspicion of the Department of Education.
In such a case teachers in most schools will face a dilemma. If they grade their students strictly according to what they think they would have got under normal circumstances they are being unfair to them, since now these same grades have been devalued. If they attempt to be fair to their students, taking into account what they expect to be happening in many schools, they are arguably being unprofessional in not following the guidelines laid down for them.
All this could have been avoided by proceeding with the examinations, as many countries are doing. There would be plenty of space in the empty classrooms of the schools and social distancing would be better observed there than it will be by many young people who will now be tempted to hang out with their friends during the long summer instead. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN HANNEY,
Shantalla,
Galway.