I’m not sure how precisely an interview can “determine the character of a person.” I agree that high points do not necessarily a good teacer make; perhaps graduate entry to both primary and secondary teaching, with a more mixed form of assessment could address this.
As for doctors and dentists, i’m not so sure. Not all medical students will go on to be GPs or paediaricians. Some surgeons for example, who do great work in alleviating suffering, might not pass an empathy test. Likewise there is always need for doctors to go into research, or pathology, where contact with patients is minimal.
On the whole I welcome this article. The system of entry suggested by TCD sounds touchy-feely but would in practice be grossly unfair.

The other point of the interview is really to explain to people about the course and the expectation. I had a friend who did social work and quite a few of her classmates had wanted to be on a high points course that sounded vaguely interesting, without a real understanding of what the course entailed.

Personally, I think an interest in social work is just as important as high points in Irish or maths!

But I will note, Jone, that despite the worries of the author that this will lead to cronyism, the current Trinity Access Programme does indeed do a great job of targetting disadvantaged students rather than children of lecturers, so I am a bit skeptical about slippery slope arguement, having seen how well the programme works first hand.

” One cannot be marked wrong and will most likely get good grades. ”

Obviously, you’ve never been to college. Just ask all the people sitting repeat exams next week in UL because they failed exams.

Au contraire Paul Mac. Had you gone to your lectures you might be in a position to remember them and throw them back. It would greatly improve your chances of not having to repeat exams.

Charles, Re your last point. I agree one hundred per cent. I did hint at that when I said that third level education should not be a once of chance for those that have just completed the leaving cert. I also make the point that a more flexible model of education would be more inclusive. Our education should have the concept of life long learning at its core.

Actually, I don’t have any repeats – far from it. And it’s not a matter of throwing back what’s covered in lectures, most lecturers don’t cover half the material you need to know for exams. If all you do is go to lectures, then you’re going to find the exams difficult to say the least.

Joanna, my comments were not aimed at you per se but at the herd engaging in herd behaviour commenting here. I am making points Socratically aimed at causing the herd stop and think. (I know it is futile but we have to try). Your article is good article and such articles are in short supply in the Irish media. Keep up the good work.

Paul Mac, your assumption are like all assumptions – the mother of all funk ups. On the other hand your academic brilliance and powers of deduction are exposed for all to see. And I pity one that has such bad lecturers down there in Limerick. Ah well one could always get a job with the Rubberbandits.

Thanks Charles. Great that the Journal provides this kind of forum for debate.

You’re the one saying that you can’t be marked wrong and still get good grades. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain, that you’re talking out of your backside. As for thinking that the lecturers are bad, far from it. Just as in any University, UL has lecturers with a wide range of teaching abilities, but no lecturer is going to cover everything in classes, students are expected to be able to read extra material themselves.

As for your comment about getting a job with the Rubberbandits, I fail to see what it has to do with the topic. A touch of argumentum ad hominem I think.

But you are assuming those subjects are on offer in secondary schools. I love history, but the other subjects were not on offer. So is it fair to prevent me to from pursuing this course based on the school I attended (essentially).

French, German or any other modern language are much more relevant than Latin or Greek when it comes to history. There are literally miles of corridors – far too many to translate – of documents in the French archives, and those of most modern states, and no similar caches of classical documents. You seem to think that history is the study of antiquity, when it’s far more than that.

Nor are scientific subjects necessarily unimportant when it comes to topics such as the scientific revolution, industrialisation, the history of medicine or some of the more technical aspects of the history of warfare. They’re niche topics – I’m not claiming that a scientific education is necessary in order to study history – but they are genuine areas of historical inquiry where a knowledge of science is needed. (History has really jumped onto the interdisciplinary bandwagon in recent years, so you could say as much about almost any subject.)

Paul is spot on with his point about the availability of some of the subjects mentioned above, too. I can at least get firmly behind the requirement for English; that’s one subject that should remain as a requirement for everyone.

Rote learning is a huge part of academic learning and critical thinking is in very short supply there too and among its graduates!

Isn’t this fantastic illustration of the problem facing a system based on notions of difficulty? How does one decide what is difficult without the influences of personal biases?

I agree that it makes sense to weight relevant subjects higher. However, this then has the unfair effect that you’re disadvantaging students who attended schools where the highly-weighted subjects weren’t available.

Weighted points is one solution, but still, we’re shooting at the wrong target. Anyone who wants to attend a course in Ireland should be allowed to do so, but the scores for entry shouldn’t be based on a cramming points system. Rather, we need to introduce a standard aptitude test that would test someone’s strengths and weaknesses. A continuous assessment model for modularised secondary school courses and actual guidance councillor input, with the student in making a decision as to what the student wants to do and if that is plausible in relation to the strengths demonstrated in their SAT, how well they did in progressing through modules in particular subjects and depending on the amount of suitable candidates for a particular general science, engineering, arts, law, medicine or commerce degree, places should be made available at the nearest suitable third level institution.

There needs to be far more continuity from primary to secondary and third level in this country. Tá an choras Oideachas breoite.

There’s also the problem of people’s preferences changing from the end of 3rd/Transition Year to the CAO. I didn’t know what college course I wanted to do when I was picking my 5th year subjects. So does this disadvantage those who may be excellent at a particular course, but didn’t know they wanted to do it in enough time?

Sorry Robert, what if you want to get a well rounded leaving cert education? There is something to be said for a basic understanding of subjects outside your area of specialisation.

Let’s face it, if I wanted to get much higher points than I got in my LC, I wouldn’t have chosen physics, would have done pass maths and given history a wide berth. Neither of those three have any special relevance to what I’m studying at the moment – and that doesn’t matter in the slightest.

Thanks John. The heading overstates my position in that what I am saying is that points system is not perfect (as opposed to bad) but it is better than all the alternatives that have been tried. The many legitimate issues that people would like addressed, such as what and how students learn at school can be addressed without changing the points system and we should not be led down the garden path on this issue by those with elitist agendas. As one wag tweeted “the leaving cert points system places an unfair burden on children of wealthy parents who otherwise would be able to get through on the nod”!

Indeed, issues with the syllabus and what is examined in each subject are certainly things that can be reformed while leaving the CAO system intact. But even modest reforms like the HPAT test for medical schools are having negative effects already. It costs approx €100 to just apply for it, and preparatory courses for the HPAT will add another few hundred euros in cost. I have never seen any objective evidence provided for the benefits of this exam, and all it seems to have done is add additional costs to applicants, which will always have the most negative effects on students from low income backgrounds.

Another point that is rarely mentioned is how many students, mainly from disadvantaged schools are already at a big disadvantage by the time they sit the Leaving Cert. Many schools do not even offer a Higher Level Maths class. Previously this amounted to a 40 point handicap, but now with the bonus points this amounts to a 65 point reduction in the maximum score possible for a student attending such a school. It’s not difficult to see why third level participation is poor from deprived areas.

There needs to be some way of identifying academically minded students in disadvantaged schools at an earlier stage and give them the support they need to compete on a level playing field by the time the Leaving Cert comes round. In the UK the 11 plus did this previously, and third level participation of the poorest socioeconomic groups has declined since its abolition. I realise that that process was stigmatising for students who didn’t make the grade, but there has to be a way to do this in a way that allows poorer students to succeed in the education system while making sure that less academically minded students don’t feel abandoned.

Oh yes, one disadvantage I failed to address is that the points system operates as a supply/demand curve, rather than being based on a measurement of the ability needed to take a particular course (insomuch as that could be quantified). I think that is a genuine problem – I spent most of my Leaving Cert year panicking because my first-choice course had needed insanely high points (I think 545?) the year before me. As it happened, it dropped to under 500 for my year. I suspect that anyone who applied for that course the year before and got, say, 520 points, would have been very annoyed at that and I don’t blame them for it.

Not sure how that issue could be resolved, though…

Aoife I agree with more or less everything you have to say including on the funding. However increasing capacity overall is going to have to be considered in the context of population increases unless we want to roll back on the percentage of leaving certificate students that go on to third level. Also in years gone by including in recent years hundreds of colleges places have been unfilled. Already the CAO is advertising unfilled courses in Institutes of Technology and Universities See link here: http://www.cao.ie/courses/vpl_courses_popup.html
This indicates that there is more room for manouver than wiggle room.

That link doesn’t work, but if it’s the one that can be accessed by clicking on “Available Place Courses” on this page http://www.cao.ie/index.php?page=aboutVPL, then I absolutely stand by my comment on the lack of opportunity for manoeuvre for universities and colleges. The majority of those courses are available in private colleges (The American College, Griffith College, IBAT, DBS, etc.) which may not be viable options for students for financial reasons.

Also, you appear to be overlooking the fact that educational bodies are independent financial entities. There may be an oversupply of places to do quantity surveying in Sligo IT, but that doesn’t mean that those resources can be easily re-directed to another university or institute of technology. Trinity or the NUI colleges or WIT appear to be full to capacity according to that link – how can you claim that they have room to manoeuvre?

I agree that university capacity should rise along with the population (I’ve no idea why you directed that part of your comment at me, because I certainly didn’t suggest otherwise), but it still all goes back to funding. Without that, there’s very little that colleges and universities can do to increase their capacity.

Aoife,

I put in a freedom of information question a couple of years ago to the colleges (the state funded ITs and Uni’s) about vacant places and for e.g. DCU had a couple of hundred unfilled places at the time. It’s kind of a tangent really. The colleges have scope. They provide hundreds of places in some courses that they don’t fill and in double digits in others for reasons that have nothing to do with how much wiggle room they have but more to do with prestige, status and vested interests.

You make a point as well about TCD having no unfilled places unlike for e.g. NUI Maynooth which currently is advertising places on its electrical engineering degree. That may indicated TCD is full to the gills but then again maybe not. Fact is Trinity has been , over the years, behind in terms of using its buildings and resources to capacity. Even still it has, very few part time degrees, check its list, and has been way behind other colleges and universities in that regard. As regards law, if TCD really wanted to open it up in terms of wider access to its law degree, why not do what UCC started years ago, when it decided to admit to law degree students that had completed a Post leaving Certificate Course in Legal Studies at the College of Commerce, Cork, into its law degree. The thing is my main point above is not that the answer is to increase the places on courses, although that could be the solution in some cases, but rather that there be more flexibility in the system, of the kind shown by UCC re its law degree. That more flexible kind of delivery of education would be very welcome in TCD and I say that as a graduate of the place.

Was waiting for someone to say that. Increasing college places is like suggesting it would solce our economic crisis by printing more money. There is a finite number of places per course for a reason.

Jack, Why are the places on medicine so restricted? Arr vested interests influencing this?. The idea that it is the Labour Market for doctors that is the reason just does not stack up. Why so many arts places and so little places on for law? I did arts and qualified as a solicitor and there are some in law professions with no primary degree. Plus, you may not be aware of this but in colleges and universities hundreds of places on certain courses have been unfilled in recent years. This means colleges have rooom for some manouver and in fact they often make decisions to increase the places on a particular courses but they still persist on restricting certain ones to an unecessary degree, and I believe they do this for the wrong reasons.

The British university interview is notoriously open to bias to the extent that it has provided plot lines for movies and plays.It facilitates a secretive old boy (and girl) network which is not open to scrutiny.You are probably not old enough to remember why we needed a transparent unmanipulable system like the points system which is driven by an algorithm and not corruption.