New Junior cycle is dumbing down our education system

The new Junior cycle is a shift to a more politically correct education system to mirror society, writes Colm O’Rourke

EDUCATION Minister Joe McHugh recently overruled the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) and made sure that History was not an optional subject for the new Junior cycle. Anyone with any knowledge of education applauded this move. Imagine young people growing up in this country without any grasp of all the important dates in our history, the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence, not to mention events like World War I and World War II. A student without even the most basic understanding of historic events could never be considered educated.

Taking away History as a subject, or having far fewer students doing it, also had repercussions for schools and time tabling. What were the now redundant History teachers to do? Nobody seemed to think this one out.

The rush to bring in a new Junior cycle is causing plenty of problems. It is a shift to a more politically correct education system to mirror society. Now you can’t fail any more — you can “fail to meet expectations” or “partially achieve” or some other corporate bulls**t. No young person is trusted to cope with failure in case it has a detrimental effect on their mental health. Instead we have 400 hours of wellbeing where we are supposed to ensure every person is cared for. This is at least double the hours needed. What have teachers been doing for all time except ensuring the wellbeing of their students? It does not have to be given a label and a set number of hours. Students in class, at sport, drama or interacting with their peers in a school setting is all wellbeing.

In the real world there is success and failure, joy and disappointment. There are county finals all over the country at the moment. Will the losers be told their performance was not up to expectation rather than they were beaten? If you don’t get the job you go for, how will this be explained? Or if you are short of points for your chosen course? Life is about coping with failure and not having it smoothed over as if it can be avoided. Of course that is part of wellbeing; resilience is important. It came naturally to an older generation, now it has to be taught. In many respects teenagers are well able to cope when left to their own devices and given gentle guidance.

The issues of anxiety are very real, I know them very well as I deal with them on a daily basis in school. I often wonder whether the increase in these issues is due to society trying to rationalise everything in a different sense or whether they were not just diagnosed before — we just got on with things. Now, unfortunately, I do see many more serious mental health cases than previously, but social media is responsible for a lot of problems here. That is for another day.

Some of the fundamental changes to Junior cycle are good, but this model of classroom-based assessment is quite flawed. It takes up a huge amount of time for very little. There was no need to invent the wheel here. The future is getting students to do portfolio work for up to 50pc of the State examinations with the rest as a terminal exam. The students’ ongoing work could be easily collected and sent away for correction by the examiners, along with the written exam. A much better system than what is there at present — there is widespread frustration among teachers with CBAs (classroom based assessments).

I know what I am putting forward for the marking of Junior cycle is broadly in line with union policy, so I will have to say three rosaries for agreeing with the ASTI. Yet even they get the occasional thing right.

Overall the Junior cycle is dumbing down education. It will soon continue on to Leaving Cert. There is nothing wrong with accumulating knowledge of all sorts and learning the difference between victory and defeat, winning and losing.

In the Junior cycle everyone is now a winner, while the methods put forward by the NCCA are questionable in some areas. Take Irish for example. There is no set oral exam for Junior cycle. Now you can do an oral presentation which is worth very little, but there should be an oral exam in Irish for all students where the ability to speak the language is the main determining factor between a pass or fail — of course you can’t use those terms anymore.

Instead, students go to Leaving Cert before being tested orally. The problem with Irish is not the teaching, it is a silly curriculum which doesn’t cultivate speaking the language. We all spoke English before we wrote it, the same should apply with Irish. What we have is institutional assassination of the subject — spending a fortune on it and then wondering why it isn’t working. A complete overhaul of the curriculum is needed.

When the minister is finished with the NCCA, he should turn his attention to the State Exams Commission (SEC) who have managed to bring the term ‘user unfriendly’ to a completely new level. Few people would believe the Dickensian methods of relaying results to schools which have not changed since time began. The sheets still have to be collected at the Post Office and manually inputted on to the systems at schools.

Why can’t these results be sent online and in a format which suits the school computer system? If those who oversee this section in the SEC were in the private sector, they would not last a week, such is the inefficiency and the arrogance.

When Rebecca Carter won her case last year against the SEC, all teachers applauded — she was going to lose her college place for a year due to inefficiency by the SEC. I thought the case might make for fundamental change. Not a bit of it; they still can’t install the most basic software package to send results. It is one step up from the Pony Express. A big step forward this year, after a decade of trying, was to get Junior Cert results issued on a Friday instead of midweek which used to result in mayhem in towns and a loss of school days.

Attempting to read results from the SEC sheets is a real test of skill. The format is a mess. If the SEC were doing their job properly, they would issue results at Leaving Cert in a much more user-friendly way with the points totted up at the bottom instead of having nervous students trying to add up their total — and often getting it wrong. It should not be asking too much to have the CAO on board, too, so the results, points and the first offer of a college place come on the one sheet. Instead of having students nervously waiting for a college place.

The education system is so full of these inefficiencies that I sometimes feel totally frustrated that something which should run in the best interests of students does exactly the opposite. And don’t get me started on oral exams at Leaving Cert level; they should all be during the Easter break when there would be a much bigger pool of examiners available. And it would save money, too. For now the minister has exercised power in the right way. It is a start, but there are a few more sacred cows who need to be tackled and cut off at the knees. It would improve all teachers’ wellbeing if he went in with the studs showing. It would merely be “in line with expectation”.