Sir, – The Leaving Certificate is being examined by the Oireachtas Committee on Further and Higher Education who have called upon senior academic and management heads to present their views.
In their response the Irish Universities Association claimed the 2021 results raised considerable alarm among them with calls to “flatten the curve”.
Those results indicated that 1,342 students (2.3 per cent) achieved 625 points and 1,988 achieved 600-624 points (3.4 per cent). This is a standard, normal distribution of scores. However, the IUA did not address the impact of maths on producing scores above 600 – the higher-level maths 25 “bonus” points. All students who achieve at least a H6 on this paper get the bonus.
The special status of maths partially explains the increase in 600-plus results, although this bonus predates the pandemic. During the pandemic students combined school- based assignments marked by teachers with traditional State exams. There are many positive effects to this approach, not least in the reduction in acute anxiety of exam performances.
So I welcome plans to retain its positive aspects. I query the IUA’s attempt to “flatten the curve” by bringing back the “old leaving certificate system” (about which we knew little) to make their job of selecting students for courses with small admission numbers easier.
The 2021 results formed a normal distribution and suggests that students in earlier years might have been disadvantaged by the “old reliable”.
– Yours, etc,
EVELYN MAHON
Emeritus Fellow,
Trinity College Dublin.