Do You Think The Leaving Cert Is Fair?

MaybeMyabeNot

What do you think about the secondary level education system?

I personally believe there should be major reforms and a drive towards continuous assessment combined with expansion and choices in any subject's curriculum.

But, of course everything is still limited by the state's resources.


What do you think?

rainbowtrout

Well that is what is being brought in at Junior Cert level with teachers marking their own students work and setting and correcting exams with no external monitoring by the SEC. I, as a teacher, am against that.

I think that have students work marked anonymously without bias is fair. There is also a substantial part of most subjects at LC assessed by means other than the written exam: Irish and foreign languages (oral and aural), History and Geography (projects), Construction, Engineering, DCG, Ag Science (practical projects), Home Economics ( journal), Art and Music (Practicals), LCVP (portfolio, work experience etc). There is room for improvement, but in such a small country, it's great that students can apply for college places based on their abilities and not on their school, home address, who they know. And that those grades are awarded without bias to them.

Rubberchikken

While I think the LC is fair in the way its conducted, I think how people study for the two years for it could be improved.

Imo there's too much rote learning which suits a particular type of person and is where, I think, others that could do with a shot lose out.

Blue giant

It is probably one of the most fair systems that there could be. The application to go to college is completely anonymous. You're just a number on a page to the corrector. Also, if you put in the work you should get good results.

DublinArnie

The only issue I have with the leaving cert is with the bell curve.

Only a X% of As are allowed for a particular subject, meaning that not everyone who deserves an A will get one. I don't see why they do this. For subjects like irish, maths and English... They should allow a much greater number of As and Bs so that would encourage people the next year to pick up higher level subjects.

To me it seems that we're all not studying for an A1 or whatever, we're studying to do better than an X amount of people and be unique in our exam so we can get our points. It's very competitive which I don't blame, competition is good and I like it, but the system should be tweaked in my opinion.

To add to that, people who excel because of the notes and teachers in private schools (we have to admit, some of them are pumping great results all year long). This means they enter the 'leaving cert pool' with the public school people, some of whom are in a disadvantaged area. These people with an advantage could fill up the maximum As or whatever available, and knock down the other people who deserve an A to a B.

Hope people understand what I mean, I just think the exam should be marked differently.

rainbowtrout

DublinArnie wrote: »

The only issue I have with the leaving cert is with the bell curve.

Only a X% of As are allowed for a particular subject, meaning that not everyone who deserves an A will get one. I don't see why they do this. For subjects like irish, maths and English... They should allow a much greater number of As and Bs so that would encourage people the next year to pick up higher level subjects.

To me it seems that we're all not studying for an A1 or whatever, we're studying to do better than an X amount of people and be unique in our exam so we can get our points. It's very competitive which I don't blame, competition is good and I like it, but the system should be tweaked in my opinion.

To add to that, people who excel because of the notes and teachers in private schools (we have to admit, some of them are pumping great results all year long). This means they enter the 'leaving cert pool' with the public school people, some of whom are in a disadvantaged area. These people with an advantage could fill up the maximum As or whatever available, and knock down the other people who deserve an A to a B.

Hope people understand what I mean, I just think the exam should be marked differently.

I disagree. The bell curve is well established at showing the distribution of grades through a population. Or anything for that matter. It doesn't have to be grades. Some years and exam is harder than average and sometimes its easier and marking schemes are adjusted to reflect that. Otherwise you would have a situation where a student could score an A1 one year and the same student score a C1 the following year due to the difficulty of the paper. Hence the curve.

Also the appearance of sets of fantastic results coning out of private schools is a little skewed. Sure they'll promote their 600 point students but they wont highlight their 300 point students or the fact that they don't have special needs students enrolled or they don't have students from disadvantaged areas. If they did you wouldn't see such a big difference.

Laurel Hill in Limerick topped the rankings in the schools list in the Sunday Times a few weeks back. It is an all girls gaelscoil. How many students so you think go there with learning difficulties? Because in my experience most students with a learning difficulty such as dyslexia are exempt from Irish.