“Sir, – Prof Áine Hyland (Letters, January 20th) outlines the various documentation that should be provided for Leaving Certificate reform. She left out some important details: a sample of a teacher robot needed to deliver this reform …” (more)
[Joseph Mackey, Irish Times, 21 January]
“Sir, – Thanks to Breda O’Brien for highlighting the issue of Leaving Certificate reform (‘Let your politicians know that education matters’, Opinion & Analysis, January 18th). I agree with her statement that while reform of the Leaving Cert is overdue, the only thing worse than delayed reform is the wrong kind of reform …” (more)
[Áine Hyland, Irish Times, 20 January]
“Sir, – The recent reports concerning the methodology for grading Leaving Certificate examinations merit discussion (‘Leaving Cert marks are altered as part of “unwritten policy”, claim examiner’, News, January 17th). An inference may be drawn from these reports that it is unfair that some grades are changed to ensure consistent results …” (more)
[Letters, Irish Times, 18 January]
“Are some students unfairly losing out on marks in the State exams? It’s a question many students and parents will be asking in light of new disclosures about how Junior and Leaving Cert exams are marked. Earlier this week, The Irish Times reported details of an internal State Examinations Commission (SEC) research paper which concluded the marking process is rushed, unfair and risks compromising the accuracy of students’ grades …” (more)
[Carl O’Brien, Irish Times, 17 January]
“Examiners involved in marking Leaving Cert papers have claimed there is an unwritten policy to alter the marks of selected students’ scripts in order to ensure consistent grades each year. A number of well-placed sources say the practice involves targeting certain exam papers whose grades can be easily manipulated because they are close to ‘grade boundaries’ …” (more)
[Carl O’Brien, Irish Times, 17 January]
“Sir, – Michael O’Leary, writing on the need to make the State exam marking system more robust, identifies an important issue (Opinion & Analysis, January 16th). Two points he makes should be contested. He states that marking schemes may be altered by reducing the number of marks awarded to difficult questions. This is counter-intuitive …” (more)
[Letters, Irish Times, 17 January]
“Every year the State Examinations Commission (SEC) undertakes a massive logistical challenge: organising exams for more than 100,000 students, marking countless scripts and issuing about a million grades. To its credit, it manages to organise this smoothly, efficiently and, usually, without major incident …” (more)
[Irish Times, 16 January]
“The State Examinations Commission (SEC) has defended its practice of awarding hundreds of ‘estimated’ grades to students. Internal records show the SEC takes this approach when some or all of a student’s work in not available for marking due to ‘unique, unforeseen and exceptional’ circumstances …” (more)
[Carl O’Brien, Irish Times, 16 January]
“School principals have warned that the Leaving Certificate exam is ‘no longer fit for purpose’ in light of an unpublished report which raises concerns over the fairness of the marking process. The National Association of Principals and Deputy principals (NAPD) was responding to a report in The Irish Times which contained details of a highly critical report on the marking process produced by the State Examinations Commission …” (more)
[Carl O’Brien, Irish Times, 14 January]
“Industrial strife resumes. After a couple of years of industrial peace, the prospect of disruption looms. Two-tier pay rates introduced in 2011 put ‘newly qualified teachers’ on inferior rates of pay. A decade later, the issue still hasn’t been fully resolved …” (more)
[Carl O’Brien, Irish Times, 7 January]
“Sir, – ‘Feeder school’ lists (Feeder Schools 2019, December 3rd) promote a distorted view that educational success is dependent on students securing places on third-level courses that require high points. They also suggest that immediate progress to third level is the only choice worth valuing and recognising …” (more)
[Letters, Irish Times, 4 December]
“Roddy Doyle is the latest high profile person to suggest that the Leaving Cert (LC) is not fit for purpose. Although best known as a writer, Doyle is a former teacher in a disadvantaged school so his opinion should be treated with a bit more respect than that of, say, David McWilliams, who has dismissed the Leaving Cert as little more than a ‘pub quiz’. Nonetheless, I think his comments are useless, in the sense that they don’t contribute anything useful to the discussion …” (more)
[An Irish Blog about Education, 29 November]
“A private school has sparked controversy by introducing a new programme that it says allows students to cover large sections of the Leaving Cert curriculum over three years. The policy of the Department of Education is that the Leaving Certificate programme should be taught over a maximum of two years …” (more)
[Carl O’Brien, Irish Times, 25 November]
“My child eventually started college – three weeks late – after being upgraded in the Leaving Cert and securing his first-choice course. What’s wrong with the correction process that leads to children having to appeal to secure grades they are entitled to? …” (more)
[Brian Mooney, Irish Times, 12 November]
“Sir, – As Sean Byrne points out in his letter (November 7th), matrices, calculus and complex numbers were on the Leaving Cert, rather than the Inter Cert in the mid-1990s. However, that isn’t how my friend remembered it, and this makes the point that our memories of our own exam experiences can be fallible …” (more)
[David Malone, Irish Times, 11 November]
“Sir, – Seán Byrne (Letters, November 7th) bemoans ‘the absence of matrices, calculus and complex numbers’ from a ‘modern maths exam’. Continuing, he states, ‘The topics listed were never on the Intermediate Certificate but they were essential topics on the Leaving Certificate until the 1990s’ …” (more)
[Fintan Gibney, Irish Times, 8 November]
“A consultation process on senior cycle education has found a strong appetite for change among students, parents and teachers who contributed, according to the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) …” (more)
[Emma O Kelly, RTÉ News, 7 November]
“Sir, – In an article on the issue of whether the Leaving Certificate was harder in the past than it is today (Education, November 5th), Dr David Malone of Maynooth University is quoted as stating that his research on this topic was prompted by a Tweet from a friend of his decrying the absence of matrices, calculus and complex numbers from a ‘modern Maths exam’ …” (more)
[Letters, Irish Times, 7 November]
“What sort of so-called modern maths exam lacks matrices, calculus and complex numbers? Dr David Malone, a mathematician at Maynooth University, noticed the question posed by a friend on Twitter and he wondered: has our maths education been dumbed down? Malone dug out a copy of an old Intermediate Cert (the precursor to the Junior Cert) maths paper from the mid-90s, when his friend sat the exam …” (more)
[Peter McGuire, Irish Times, 5 November]]
“Government Ministers have intervened to pressurise universities into providing college places for dozens of students who were told in recent days that they could not take up their places until next year. Thirty-five students were told last Thursday there was no college place for them in the current year after they secured places following rechecks and upgrades of their Leaving Cert exam papers, The Irish Times understands …” (more)
[Carl O’Brien, Irish Times, 22 September]
