The way forward for LC2021

History Queen

alroley wrote: »

I saw the girl on Matt Cooper - she had valid points.

What did the ISSU say about it?

What was the general gist of her argument?

alroley

History Queen wrote: »

What was the general gist of her argument?

New variant being more transmissible, report out today saying 16-18 year olds are second to healthcare workers in levels of infection, worried about students and teachers that live with vulnerable people.

PoolDude

Is this all an orchestrated sham?

I was thinking about it overnight. The key challenge for students and teachers is the lack of time over the two year cycle to complete the course and teach or revise most effectively.

The Minister said data will be gathered up to end of May for PG and they also shared, per the concern in the TUI statement, there has been no further change to the papers.

So what they got was all parties calling out what they ‘gave up’ or are not happy with, thereby eroding confidence in the PG and students left with effectively no relief from the heavy workload as they need to try to be on top of every subject till June regardless of which path they take and then due to lack of trust in the system need to take the unchanged written exams which they feel under prepared for.

Am I missing something?

jimmytwotimes 2013

PoolDude wrote: »

Is this all an orchestrated sham?

I was thinking about it overnight. The key challenge for students and teachers is the lack of time over the two year cycle to complete the course and teach or revise most effectively.

The Minister said data will be gathered up to end of May for PG and they also shared, per the concern in the TUI statement, there has been no further change to the papers.

So what they got was all parties calling out what they ‘gave up’ or are not happy with, thereby eroding confidence in the PG and students left with effectively no relief from the heavy workload as they need to try to be on top of every subject till June regardless of which path they take and then due to lack of trust in the system need to take the unchanged written exams which they feel under prepared for.

Am I missing something?

I think the numbers opting to sit papers will be low. Be interesting to see.

From a teaching perspective it will be interesting. Some of your class will go for PG and some won't. Will the PG group not attend that class or not engage in the class if we return?

Will some schools push for more tests to have data for PG but waste prep time for those who want to prepare for the LC?

I would also assume all students would be encouraged, by their schools, to try and sit the papers so they will have choice of best outcome.

Hopefully guidance will be concrete from the Dept but I won't hold my breath.

Barbeapapa

To current 5th years worried about the silence over the impact on your years: last year when the leaving cert was cancelled I wrote to Joe McHugh who wrote back to say the current 6th years (then 5th years) would be looked after in due course. What we thought (too simplistic?) would be the obvious solution was adjusting the exam papers to account for irretrievable classroom time. This was never addressed, bar an inadequate extra question. They stayed silent until this January lockdown and now it is the mess we are all talking about. My 6th year would still have preferred an adjusted set of papers, and they are still not the case. Afaik the papers for the "traditional" leaving cert are as they would have been had there been regular living these past 6 months.

If previous experience is anything to go by, the current 5th years will also be under pressure to finish a course in less time than previous years had. So you are right to start beating that drum already. Be prepared to be ignored, the track record of the department of education is not great in this regard.

noplacehere

Thinking about this overnight and to be honest I don’t see how this will reduce stress levels in the immediate term for anyone.

Students have a decision to make. That decision then impacts the rest of their school year. If they chose predictive grades then they have to perform in every single test and they have to hope that the algorithm won’t reduce them arbitrarily. They will also be sitting in classes with students who need the course covered and finished so the pace is still going to be high and frantic. From watching students in junior cert coping with continuous assessment in CBAs I can see stress levels through the roof. The orals and practicals are going ahead for anyone taking the exams so all that prep will still have to be done. And to be honest in a subject like music where the practical is usually worth 50% I’d imagine the teachers will do assessments of those anyways for the predictive grades, otherwise they wouldn’t really have a decent assessment of their marks. If they are taking the exams then obviously all work needs to be done and revised as well as all practicals and orals. So no reduction in content or pressure for anyone apart from less pressure in June itself.

It’s going to be insanely stressful for teachers and management. Classes are now dual stream with two sets of students with different objectives and outcomes, one of those who are reliant on the teacher to give them what they want. I’d expect a significant cohort in the middle to challenge every single grade or be conveniently absent for class tests for the next while or ‘need to take them online’ as this has already been happening in schools in my experience. It’s now going to be worse. Even the ones sitting exams need the course finished, practicals and orals all sat with just a couple of weeks in class before them. that’s not getting into teachers having to do other schools practicals and orals over Easter?! And then there’s the junior certs to be planned for, staff agreement needed on structure of grades etc etc

Ugh. This is messy.

PoolDude

noplacehere wrote: »

Thinking about this overnight and to be honest I don’t see how this will reduce stress levels in the immediate term for anyone.

Students have a decision to make. That decision then impacts the rest of their school year. If they chose predictive grades then they have to perform in every single test and they have to hope that the algorithm won’t reduce them arbitrarily. They will also be sitting in classes with students who need the course covered and finished so the pace is still going to be high and frantic. From watching students in junior cert coping with continuous assessment in CBAs I can see stress levels through the roof. The orals and practicals are going ahead for anyone taking the exams so all that prep will still have to be done. And to be honest in a subject like music where the practical is usually worth 50% I’d imagine the teachers will do assessments of those anyways for the predictive grades, otherwise they wouldn’t really have a decent assessment of their marks. If they are taking the exams then obviously all work needs to be done and revised as well as all practicals and orals. So no reduction in content or pressure for anyone apart from less pressure in June itself.

It’s going to be insanely stressful for teachers and management. Classes are now dual stream with two sets of students with different objectives and outcomes, one of those who are reliant on the teacher to give them what they want. I’d expect a significant cohort in the middle to challenge every single grade or be conveniently absent for class tests for the next while or ‘need to take them online’ as this has already been happening in schools in my experience. It’s now going to be worse. Even the ones sitting exams need the course finished, practicals and orals all sat with just a couple of weeks in class before them. that’s not getting into teachers having to do other schools practicals and orals over Easter?! And then there’s the junior certs to be planned for, staff agreement needed on structure of grades etc etc

Ugh. This is messy.

I agree but honestly don’t think students have a choice, rather 2 chances to get a good grade but with all the stress and complications you call out

km79

A lot of good points made
The oral situation is a shambles
So in your class you might have 1/3 taking the orals . They need prep between now and Easter . The other 2/3 don’t .
What happens there then !
It won’t work
For many reasons .

Random sample

For a student who just needs to pass the leaving cert, and has been tipping along nicely, there’s no reason to sit exams.

It’s really only students who are aiming very high, are close to their points requirement or who are definitely expecting to fail through predicted grades that need to sit the exams.

Random sample

km79 wrote: »

A lot of good points made
The oral situation is a shambles
So in your class you might have 1/3 taking the orals . They need prep between now and Easter . The other 2/3 don’t .
What happens there then !
It won’t work
For many reasons .

I agree, they should all have to do the oral. There’ll be sraith pictiúr burning all over Ireland this week.

km79

I assume mocks are gone now .......in fact any formal exams are probably gone now as they will carry far too much significance......

jimmytwotimes 2013

Random sample wrote: »

For a student who just needs to pass the leaving cert, and has been tipping along nicely, there’s no reason to sit exams.

It’s really only students who are aiming very high, are close to their points requirement or who are definitely expecting to fail through predicted grades that need to sit the exams.

And the students aiming high should prob take maybe 4 papers and go hell for leather studying for those.

Take predicted in subjects they feel they place well, within their class, in

noplacehere

km79 wrote: »

I assume mocks are gone now .......in fact any formal exams are probably gone now as they will carry far too much significance......

I think I’d be sending a mock home over a week with those planning to take the exam. I’d usually do that over Easter anyways for maths and the composing paper in music. Sure they can cheat if they want but they need to try and take a full length exam before june

jimmytwotimes 2013

km79 wrote: »

I assume mocks are gone now .......in fact any formal exams are probably gone now as they will carry far too much significance......

I would think some managers will push for some kind of exams for more data.

Bit messy tho. If a school, for example, pushes for Easter exams, some students would just be focused on their prep for orals.

Different aims of different students now, within the same class groups.

https://www.rte.ie/news/education/2021/0218/1197821-ireland-education/

Apparently, plenty of time to get your data needed for predictive by giving (now high-stakes) tests but also get your courses covered. Hmmm

noplacehere

jimmytwotimes 2013 wrote: »

I would think some managers will push for some kind of exams for more data.

Bit messy tho. If a school, for example, pushes for Easter exams, some students would just be focused on their prep for orals.

Different aims of different students now, within the same class groups.

Yup. There’s going to be difficulties ahead due to this. Particularly the oral and practical

Rosita

PoolDude wrote: »

Is this all an orchestrated sham?

I was thinking about it overnight. The key challenge for students and teachers is the lack of time over the two year cycle to complete the course and teach or revise most effectively.

The Minister said data will be gathered up to end of May for PG and they also shared, per the concern in the TUI statement, there has been no further change to the papers.

So what they got was all parties calling out what they ‘gave up’ or are not happy with, thereby eroding confidence in the PG and students left with effectively no relief from the heavy workload as they need to try to be on top of every subject till June regardless of which path they take and then due to lack of trust in the system need to take the unchanged written exams which they feel under prepared for.

Am I missing something?

You are missing the absolute thousands upon thousands who can now down tools having no academic requirement in particular which necessitates the sitting of the Leaving Cert e.g. people who already have been offered a place on a plc course, and the absolute thousands upon thousands who can relax in the knowledge that whatever academic requirement they do need will be met easily by predicted grades.

I know several students personally who have been banking on this since September. You will never hear the Minister for Education or the newspapers talking about people like this but they are out there in big numbers. They will find plenty of relief from the 'heavy workload'. Some will not darken the door of the school again and - to revisit a theme from a day or two ago here - any teacher or Principal who thinks even for a moment that they can hold lack of attendance over them in any shape or form with regard to calculated grades, think again.

Other winners are borderline cases in Maths who are hanging on for the bonus points. Irrespective of their ability, good luck to any teacher trying to talk them down in these last few months. And they'll have the safety net of taking OL in the LC in the unlikely event that they won't be fairly confident of the grade they are getting at HL. I say unlikely in that I'd expect teachers who are minded to fail people in predicted grades will, in the students' best interests, drop strong hints. Other teachers, by their very personal nature, will find it impossible not to do so in any event.

Other winners are OL language students who might have needed to drop to Foundation Level. Why would they do that now with no requirement to do an oral or even a written exam? Would a teacher really fail them?

Other winners are those who can now drop subjects which they find time-consuming and relatively unrewarding in the context of potential improvement. I am thinking, maybe, Irish, English and Maths, where gazumping your natural level of ability is difficult. Students with a good work-ethic can now drop some subjects such as these especially if they are in good standing with the teacher, knowing that they would be unlikely to better the probable calculated grade in the exam, and concentrate on information-heavy subjects where they could maximise their grade with no risk.

You will have the occasional student who'll be hurt at not having the chance to show the world how amazing they are. But of course they still can do that. But they will be few and far between. By and large, students played the stress card and came up trumps. It's hard to think of any losers at this point. The force of the inevitable storm around results and the nature of the transition to third-level might tell a different tale.

The Dept of Ed is well aware that they have taken the populist route. The most telling straw in the wind as to what they are really thinking is the prediction that the Orals will be conducted over a couple of days, when normally this would be a two-week process.

Clearly they expect hardly anybody to do the Oral exams in the expectation that they will be catered for under predicted grades. You can be sure that they expect this will be the case across most subjects. This plan is there to put the Leaving Cert to bed, and like any good three-card trick man they are offering the illusion of "choice" while in reality encouraging you to take the choice they want you to take.

Based on the announcement from the Minister last week ahead of the talks which more or less told us what the conclusions would be before they started, you'd wonder what they were talking about all this time because there's little evidence of the teacher unions' fingerprints on these outcomes.

jimmytwotimes 2013

Good point by Rosita.

If a student chooses to stay away from school for the remainder of the year. This can't be held against them in the PG process. Who is anyone to say the reasons for this aren't genuine?

This, then, makes a mockery of any school assessment for PG as others will say, well if they're not coming in and sitting a class test, why should I risk doing poorly in a test and risk a drop in my PG?

Icsics

Are the LCAs included in this? Won’t be seeing any of mine again if they are, not that I’m complaining!

noplacehere

jimmytwotimes 2013 wrote: »

Good point by Rosita.

If a student chooses to stay away from school for the remainder of the year. This can't be held against them in the PG process. Who is anyone to say the reasons for this aren't genuine?

This, then, makes a mockery of any school assessment for PG as others will say, well if they're not coming in and sitting a class test, why should I risk doing poorly in a test and risk a drop in my PG?

Do we have any clarity on this though? I thought if we aren’t predicting until May they’d have to be in?

am_zarathustra

Has it been explicitly stated that you can't take engagement (or attendence) into account in this new accredited grading or whatever we are calling it now. If I've finished the last 10% of the course and you weren't there surely that impacts on your grade?

I'll be telling all my students to sit the exams, Lord knows what the standardization process will bring

Mardy Bum

More data between now and June is absolutely essential. I would assume every school will be holding exams in April and May provided it is possible.

Rosita

am_zarathustra wrote: »

Has it been explicitly stated that you can't take engagement (or attendence) into account in this new accredited grading or whatever we are calling it now. If I've finished the last 10% of the course and you weren't there surely that impacts on your grade?

I would say it would have to be explicitly stated that you can take engagement/attendance into account because hasn't one of the great selling points of the LC always been that whatever might be the background everyone started on the same line in the exam.

This the LC exam not the TY end-of-year awards. Under no circumstances would a decision to penalise students for engagement/attendance stand up to any scrutiny. Especially in the current febrile 'student centred' atmosphere.

jimmytwotimes 2013

noplacehere wrote: »

Do we have any clarity on this though? I thought if we aren’t predicting until May they’d have to be in?

No, but if students quote health concerns due to covid, can't query it really

r93kaey5p2izun

Rosita wrote: »

Other winners are OL language students who might have needed to drop to Foundation Level. Why would they do that now with no requirement to do an oral or even a written exam? Would a teacher really fail them?

I think students like these in any subject, at risk of failing, will absolutely have to sit the paper. No matter how much they think they can rely on their teacher, they cannot rely on the algorithm. If it's just a couple of subjects then that gives them a chance of focusing on that subject for the exam. But I would see little relief here for a student who is in the bottom 5 in all or most subject classes.

Teach30

Thinking about my LC class and what way I would dish out PG. I didnt do any of this last year.

I have one student who has worked and continuously got h1s from 5th year on but isn’t going doing a high points course... would I still give the highest a grade to that student.... I have others hoping to do medicine and law who’d still be excellent but not as good at answering Qs.

I have results from about 6 small class tests to go on and two small tests they did at home. I don’t keep a record of homework. I’m not even sure if I have a record of tests they did in 5th year.

Hopontop

Nyla Worried Son wrote: »

I think students like these in any subject, at risk of failing, will absolutely have to sit the paper. No matter how much they think they can rely on their teacher, they cannot rely on the algorithm. If it's just a couple of subjects then that gives them a chance of focusing on that subject for the exam. But I would see little relief here for a student who is in the bottom 5 in all or most subject classes.

I think it should be stressed to all students the “no lose situation” in sitting the exam, and that whatever mark a teacher gives it could be downgraded due to an algorithm.

Also I really think people don’t realise how much students overestimate their ability.
How often has a teacher told a student “you have the ability, you just need to put in the work” and all the student hears is the first part.
Most students get a reality check after sitting a mock, and effort levels usually skyrocket after them. But if students just switch off now thinking they’ll be given the grade they think they deserve, that reality check will come too late in August.

Rosita

Teach30 wrote: »

I have one student who has worked and continuously got h1s from 5th year on but isn’t going doing a high points course... would I still give the highest a grade to that student.... I have others hoping to do medicine and law who’d still be excellent but not as good at answering Qs.

But your job is to assess at LC level not to try to influence who gets into what course. Not wishing to be smart but saying someone is not as good at answering questions........ultimately the exam is about answering questions. It's like saying I'm a great snooker player just not great at potting balls. Ultimately, while other factors contributed, ability to answer questions is the measure.

Hopontop

Teach30 wrote: »

Thinking about my LC class and what way I would dish out PG. I didnt do any of this last year.

I have one student who has worked and continuously got h1s from 5th year on but isn’t going doing a high points course... would I still give the highest a grade to that student.... I have others hoping to do medicine and law who’d still be excellent but not as good at answering Qs.

I have results from about 6 small class tests to go on and two small tests they did at home. I don’t keep a record of homework. I’m not even sure if I have a record of tests they did in 5th year.

I’m in the same boat, thought I dodged the bullet last year.
I’d say you have to be honest and give the results fairly i.e. not consider what courses they are picking.
I can probably roughly estimate the top 2 and bottom 2 in my class but after that it’s going to be next to impossible.
(Also I have a child of a colleague in the class, really polite and hardworking, expecting the H1 but I can’t say for definite if they would have got it)

Teach30

Rosita wrote: »

But your job is to assess at LC level not to try to influence who gets into what course. Not wishing to be smart but saying someone is not as good at answering questions........ultimately the exam is about answering questions. It's like saying I'm a great snooker player just not great at potting balls. Ultimately, while other factors contributed, ability to answer questions is the measure.

I suppose this students answering style seems better? I’ve never marked LC level so I’m only assuming. Others would be as good but wouldn’t write as long or detailed an answer for Qs but then they might do better in an official exam as they write less so get more covered. I use marking schemes for correcting but even they are vague and never say exactly what to expect from student.

I know what your saying but these are the things some teachers will consider when giving PG!

Their future course prospects will be down to the me and I’d hate to be remembered for not giving results they need and deserve. That’s just my thinking right now, I’ll obviously follow guidelines when we get them.

am_zarathustra

Teach30 wrote: »

I suppose this students answering style seems better? I’ve never marked LC level so I’m only assuming. Others would be as good but wouldn’t write as long or detailed an answer for Qs but then they might do better in an official exam as they write less so get more covered. I use marking schemes for correcting but even they are vague and never say exactly what to expect from student.

I know what your saying but these are the things some teachers will consider when giving PG!

Their future course prospects will be down to the me and I’d hate to be remembered for not giving results they need and deserve. That’s just my thinking right now, I’ll obviously follow guidelines when we get them.

No teacher should consider the course they might or might not get when grading the students. Need is not in the equation, only deserve.