Would you favour JC abolition in favour of the SEC running the LC at the end of 5Y?

Peter Flynt

S there I was today supervising the Junior Cert exams when it occurred to me that this is all likely to come to and end with the reasons given by Quinn that we are moving away from exams. . . Only we're not as exams comprise 60% of the JCSA grade.

Most teachers know that the reason for the JCSA is to save money by getting teachers to mark and supervise third years and not bother paying them. It saves around 30 million a year.

Then it occurred to me . . Could there be a knock benefit created by the abolition of the JCSA state exams (as the exams will still exist)?

What about exams at the end of fifth year for Leaving Certificate students?

In other words the Leaving Cert would be divided into two parts - each syllabus will have a fifth year part (examined in June at the end of fifth year) and a sixth year part (examined in June at the end of sixth year).

Each 5th year exam would be equivalent in weighting to a 6th year exam with the overall grade for each subject being an average of the two.

Advantages:
1 - Cuts dramatically the pressure on students.
2 - Allows students to focus more with examinations at the end of each year.
3 - Students who do well in their 5th year exams would be well motivated for their 6th year state exams
4 - May motivate students in sixth year to give a better account of themselves if they didn't do quite as well in fifth year.
5 - May raise educational standards.

Disadvantages:
1 - The abolition of an independent state assessed exam for 3rd years.

So what do you think?

RH149

Sounds like a good idea to me ....but also a non starter as if the motivation to get rid of the traditional JC is cost cutting, they aren't going to pay for supervision and assessment in both 5th and 6th year. I think they'd cram a load of projects/ practical elements/ portfolios into Fifth year and make their teachers assess those and still hit them with a big exam at the end of 6th year.


Still.....it would be ideal!

RealJohn

Would make for very little flexibility for teachers since they'd have to cover specific material in fifth year and specific material in sixth year. Depending on the class, that sort of rigidity might not be helpful.
If a student does well in fifth year they might be motivated to do better in sixth year but if they do badly, they might be completely unmotivated.
If they're allowed to repeat the fifth year exams (which presumably they will be), they're likely to try and do them with the sixth year exams too.
Far more pressure on the marking process since presumably, the fifth year exam results would still have to be in before they start sixth year. Given that the junior cert results aren't out until mid-September they can stagger the marking process currently.
I don't think it would actually reduce the pressure on students at all. I think it would just mean that they're doing high pressure exams two years in a row (which, in fairness, might not be bad preparation for college if that's their goal but if it's not it's just more pressure for little benefit).

I don't think the positives outweigh the negatives here at all.

linguist

The logistics of this for the SEC could be quite something. One assumes that the quantity to examine on each sixth year script would go down so individual examiners could be assigned more work. However, you would need a new cohort of examiners to examine the fifth year work, possibly drawn from the current junior cert examiners.

Quite aside from the fact that this would appear to negate the money saving agenda which we know is behind abolishing the JC, both of these LC exams would be equally high stakes since they would count for 50pc of the marks. In reality, the chief examiner most closely monitors the outcomes at higher level LC and generally defers to subordinates at the other levels unless things are going very badly wrong. At a stroke, you would be doubling the workload of the senior examiners or requiring the recruitment of additional staff at the top of the process in addition to the rank and file examiners. You must really want to give Brendan Howlin a coronary!!

Peter Flynt

You'd just be reassigning those who have traditionally worked at JC for the SEC to this new "fifth year LC"

There is a precedent for all of this - with the AS Levels in the UK

linguist

Yes, I get that. But isn't the point that they basically want to do away with half the examiners or as close to that number as matters? Thus, they won't go for this.

RealJohn

Yeah, linguist's spot on. Getting rid of the junior cert is a money saving exercise and not having to pay examiners is a big part of that. There's no chance of it happening.

Peter Flynt

RealJohn wrote: »

Yeah, linguist's spot on. Getting rid of the junior cert is a money saving exercise and not having to pay examiners is a big part of that. There's no chance of it happening.

I know there's no chance of it happening.

I'm putting it out there as an idea