Guidance Counsellors call for HPAT to be scrapped

take everything

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0914/1224324010701.html

They say it has done nothing to promote equality of access.

Jessibelle

It wasn't ever supposed to promote access to students from disadvantaged areas more so than those from fee paying schools though, but rather that it was to increase the gender balance in schools, given they felt at the time the method of examination of the Leaving Cert favoured girls over boys. I'd wonder if it's achieved even that?

2Scoops

Increasing the number of men in medicine was the unofficial goal and it achieved it, to some extent. I remember reading that the sex ratio had gone from 70:30 in favour of females before HPAT down 60:40 in the first year of HPAT. HPAT, of course, is a test that is not gender biased, so it was used to mitigate the effect of the LC's own gender bias - that's an important point.

And if guidance counsellors are truly concerned about the unfairness of the moneyed elite repeating tests and getting expensive tutoring, I fully expect them to release a statement condemning the LC just as vehemently as today's piece against the HPAT. Will it happen? Will it f.

The HPAT has become an easy target - it's clearly headed for the chop, as James Reilly has indicated more than once. Coming out against it now, when the writing's on the wall, seems a bit like a contrived effort to generate headlines and make it look like you're an active lobby group. I mean, seriously, did anyone even know that there was a 'Institute of Guidance Counsellors?'