Never gonna happen.

Maybe stay in some form of education until 18 but forcing kids to do the leaving certificate that have no interest/aptitude for academic lifestyle is cruelly pointless.

Absolutely Conor, not everyone wants to take the path of university etc and deserve to be able to use other very valid routes to the workplace.

I agree. The move to continuous assessment is definitely a positive but there will always be a place for formal examinations.
There is also some space for rote learning. Assessment methods can be massively useful indicators not only of how much someone knows but also the depth of understanding and ability to apply what they have learned.
All of this can be catered for in dividing the assessment between continuous assessment and regular examinations. Design of assessment can provide massive value to both the teachers and the pupils.

Also, pupils should be able to get results which help them identify more where they are strong and where they can be stronger. If you look at some JC papers that are there now, some of them have sections which look for knowledge with other sections looking for understanding and application.
It’s not consistent across subjects but it would certainly be helpful to be able to give pupils an overall mark plus a division on where the marks came from – e.g. to be able to show how many of those marks are down to knowledge, understanding, application, creativity etc etc…

Why exactly is more continuous assessment positive? A great deal of the support for it is based on hunches and unproven feelings. The reality is they are less fair, harder to regulate and easier to cheat in.

Rather than terminal exams it facilitates formative assessment. The benefits of which are researched and proven way beyond hunches.

I’m assuming you have a pretty fixed view of what continuous assessment means if your opinion is truly as stated. Continuous assessment could be as simple as covering a topic and doing an exam in that topic once covered with your mark going towards a 3rd year final grade.

There are issues around continuous assessment but that does not make them insurmountable issues.

The literature on the issue suggests that continuous assessment gives a fair clearer picture of the ability of a student. In general, terminal exam systems are a test of memory, not ability.

Memory testing is still relevant. Many professions are based on memory. CA has a role but its expansion will greatly encourage plagiarism and we won’t be able to measure it. Plagiarism is only beginning to be dealt with in universities with expensive software like Turnitin. A certain amount of plagiarism in third level is impossible to detect even with the best technology. Without an approach like this the problem of plagiarism can indeed be insurmountable.

I agree. I mean my JC (11 years on) is a pretty useless piece of paper that doesn’t even get a look-in on the CV but its gives great practice for the setting & what’s expected. Even getting used to the booklets, filling in your number instead of name is all good practice. Also I had some wonderful teachers who I really liked & the feeling was returned but equally I had others & we could hardly stand one another; my class once had a teacher refuse to teach us! We weren’t wild kids but it was LCVP & we couldn’t take it seriously, anyway if she were marking us we’d all have failed or barely passed but our actual results were distinctions pretty much all round so CA may bring issues if marked by ones own teacher.

It’s got nothing to do with educational or financial motives. This is populist. Most people will be in favour of this, even the majority of students. The government don’t do things like this to save money or improve education standards.

But it seems daft! We all can remember teachers who had pet students and pupils who they despised. Students mismatched or not on the same wavelength as their teacher. The Elephant in the room is, who is going to guarantee impartiality under the new system if it is teachers who are examining their own students?

They really have no choice in the matter as so few of our students can pass it. With the exception of Irish and Irish history, American students who were given our living cert exam passed it by a factor of 12x over our students!

@Aoife: “so few of our students can pass it”
the statistics don’t show that:
http://www.cso.ie/px/des/Dialog/varval.asp?ma=eda95&ti=Junior+Certificate+Results+(Number)+by+Year,+Details+of+Results+and+Sex&path=../Database/DES/Examination%20Statistics/&lang=1

Did you pass your ‘living cert’ Aoife?

Stress is part of life. Taking stress out of a competitive system is impossible. Its a fair test. The expansion of continuous assessment in the UK is behind to rampant grade inflation. This will happen here at an increased pace. The real danger is if the Leaving Cert were to be replaced with continuous assessment. That would be truly backward.

@Aoife can you please give a reference to that study comparing US and Irish students? I’d love to read about it.

Agree Sharon – in terms of outcomes this attachment outlines the Finnish approach – a million miles from our own – learner-centred, students involved in designing their learning activities and assessing their own learning, and they have the highest PISA scores for literacy numeracy etc in the world…

http://ims.mii.lt/ims/files/EducationmodelFinland_Marianne.pdf

Their education system is characterised by “giving equal value to all aspects of individual growth and learning: personality, morality, creativity, knowledge and skills”.

They need also to consult widely with children and young people in an age-appropriate way about their learning experience and environment – what they feel helps them to learn well, what hinders their learning. If you listen they have remarkable agreement on what is hindering their learning and what helps, but nobody is listening, despite this being considered good practice in other countries – but since when did Ireland ever listen to citizens and service-users – perhaps it’s not in our DNA!

I believe our education system is not fit for purpose in the modern world. It is a severely damaging affair for way too many children. It privileges academic subjects and does not, at secondary level anyway, take enough account of multiple intelligences and learning styles, many young people are disengaged because they are bored in school, not involved enough in their own learning, and then subject to disciplinary systems that punish them for essentially not being engaged. A shocking waste of vibrant potential.

Why is school by far the biggest stress in an adolescent’s life? Is that OK?

How will continuous assessment put massive stress on children? Not if you do it right – for example, many schools (but not in this country) also use self-assessment as part of the ongoing process, together with teacher assessment.

You also have to understand that at the present time the majority of students (my son has just done the Junior Cert last year) do not see any point in the Junior Cert, as they are well aware it dates from a time when you were quite likely to leave school after it and so it was a qualification. Now it qualifies you for nothing. The stress on my son and his mates last year with the Junior Cert was unnecessary and horrible. Ongoing assessment, project work, with more individual and group responsibility will be so much more enjoyable and they will learn how to think for themselves much better. Last year was all cramming facts to regurgitate for the Junior Cert – undignified and not what learning should be about, and lower order thinking.

I’d love to see how this is handled actually. Teachers have expressed the concern before that marking their own pupils’ work “changes the relationship” between teacher and pupil.
It’s really a question of integrity.

I know what you’re saying though – there shouldn’t be that question at all. Some kind of statistical tool could be used perhaps? It would definitely need some kind of cross checking.

The thing about people thinking this is a bad idea…. I wonder do they know that this has been happening already for years. In (at least)Leaving Certificate Construction Studies there is project work that gets marked by the teacher and an external examiner comes in to selectively check the teacher markings.

Tommy- you can add History, Geography and LCVP to that list too and there’s probably many more.

Yes and project work for the leaving cert is the area most open to compromise and corruption – cut and pasting from the Internet – help from friends and relatives – so much help from well meaning teachers that they and not the student are most responsible for the grade – the old system was absolutely transparent and incorruptible – it has problems but continuous assessment is an at active can housing some foul worms – in univsities plagiarism is rife and students can purchase papers over the Internet – just like Churchill said about democracy – the terminal exam that is externally assessed by standardised grade criteria is the least bad and therefore best means of assessing and driving learning

Grammar camp … Summer school a la America … who knows …

Power which most teachers, and I am one, don’t want. And it is dumbing down. Indeed since I started teaching the dumbing down if the whole system has been the single greatest tragedy of my career. It’s now all about ensuring students are happy rather than properly educated and that students never learn that they are different to others in terms of intelligence be it brighter or not so bright. Homogenisation rules now and our job is about feeding the ego instead if the mind.

I’m not sure if you are serious about being a teacher Alan because if so I am shocked that you would describe children in terms of brighter or not so bright! There are multiple intelligences granted, but unless you have an actual learning disability or difficulty, children are not brighter or not bright – it is well documented that engagement, confidence, relationships within the school and with the teacher, involvement in learning and a feeling of emotional safety are huge factors in how well children learn. Any parent knows that when their child has a bad teacher (whether in terms of pedagogy or being rude and disrespectful to children, or not being able to work with groups) they will not do well in that subject.

I heard a talk from a guy from, I think, DCU, about how the Irish undergraduates that come to their colleges are not capable of creative and independent thought because of our education system.

And what is wrong with students being happy anyway? Most are miserable in school. Is that OK? Look at the My World survey of 14,000 Irish adolescents and you will see how school is the greatest stress in their lives by a long shot (not just exams either – that’s a separate category). Why are we not listening to them? After all it is their education and if the system so far has delivered at the end of it young people who cannot think or engage with third level properly, it has failed.

Even if you are not interested in the happiness of the students who spend most of their waking hours in school, or do not want to see them as whole people who carry their emotions with them, then even just looking at outcomes, more enlightened systems in other countries have better outcomes.

Feeding the ego is not the aim I would of thought of any system that is dealing with children – respecting them, giving them a say, providing them with a stimulating learning environment, understanding that they are human beings not divorced from their feelings and have a right not to be miserable in school is hardly feeding their egos.

interesting report on a group of English students on exchange to Finnish school (highest PISA scores on literacy, numeracy, etc in world) where they were knocked out by the feeling of trust and respect, the responsibility the students were given, the good teacher student relationships and first name terms, the lack of uniforms, etc: – we can only dream of something so humane and enlightened. As the English students put it:

‘I don’t think people enjoy school here [England]
… they’re forced to come to school. I think it’s
all to do with this relaxed happy atmosphere that
they have in Finland, they enjoy coming to school
coz they haven’t got the rules, they haven’t got the
regulation, they haven’t got exams, they haven’t
got the pressure, they enjoy their time at school.
Whereas here, I think sometimes we’re just seen
as a set of statistics, which isn’t really a nice thing
to be.’ [Rhianna, 15 years old]

Teachers trust them [Finnish learners] in ways
that they don’t us, they are given responsibility in
the idea that there isn’t such a strict regime of
sanctions and rewards and such. They’re given
the responsibility … but not to the teachers as
such, but to each other and themselves … That
was one of the reasons why they think, ‘We
actually won’t do that [behave badly] because
we’ve been given the responsibility now not to.’
[Joe, 16 years old]

Sorry that report here: http://www.uel.ac.uk/wwwmedia/microsites/riste/Gerry-Czerniawski-Article-14-18.pdf

They don’t want this, check it out, all teacher representative bodies have been resisting teacher assessment – not because they don’t want the ‘power’ (which they don’t) but because of the power of school authorities and parents to try to influence the outcomes of students

I teach some Finnish school kids and I can report that that system has is downsides. While they do have some homework, it isn’t really enough, in my view, to ensure they actually learn anything. I think the emphasis in Finland is too much on “feeling good” and not actually learning. And they like to think their society is equal, but an article in “The Helsinki Times” today reports that, among other things, nearly 40% of undergraduate students have a father who is one of Finland’s top 10% of earners (defined as earning more than €46,800 p.a.). So educational inequality is alive and well here. On top of all that the kids are really badly disciplined, leading to frequent school shootings, bullying, and overall nasty teenagers, in my opinion. It’s nice that kids aren’t stressed out by school, but only to a certain extent.