Cancelling Leaving is the right call but it creates a host of new problems

OF all the decisions taken by the Government since the onset of the Coronavirus crisis, calling off the Leaving Cert exams will have been one of the most difficult.

For the eight weeks since Leo Varadkar announced schools were to shut down, the class of 2020 have been left in limbo with little or no information about the exams that will define many of their lives.

The initial decision to postpone the exams to the end of July always seemed a hopeful compromise measure at best and the cancellation of the Leaving Cert has appeared inevitable for several weeks.

Doubtless the Government, Education Minister Joe McHugh and the Department of Education did everything in their power to salvage the exams but, in the context of Coronavirus, staging the Leaving Cert was just too high a mountain to climb.

Aside from the health risks, the simple logistics of reorganising the entire State exam schedule – including the likely need to rewrite every exam paper – asked too much of a country whose normal systems are already stretched to breaking point.

That students had to wait so long for clarity is deeply unfortunate and the uncertainty will have added greatly to their stress levels in what is already a difficult time for everyone.

At least now there is certainty. The exams have been called off and the anxious weeks of waiting for information are finally over.

There can be little doubt that the Government has, finally, made the right call but the decision creates a host of new problems that will have to be navigated in the coming months.

The first, and arguably the biggest, is how exactly the ‘predicted marks’ will be decided.

The whole concept of the Leaving Cert is that candidates are tested and their results marked anonymously to ensure every student is on a level playing field.

In an ideal world, teachers absolutely should not have anything to do with marking their students’ State exam papers as it is impossible to guarantee fairness if they do.

Eliminating or accounting for bias – whether it is accidental or not – will be extraordinarily difficult. Even the most conscientious of teachers may, unconsciously, mark their students a few points up or down and compensating for that, to ensure the exams’ integrity, will be a tough task.

That students will be assessed on past exams or course-work is also hard on the candidates. Many will have spent their entire academic lives gearing up for the Leaving Cert, studying for years so they would be ready to give their very best in the exam hall.

Many of them will now find their futures decided on the basis of exams or course work that they, very reasonably, thought would have no bearing on the exam and on which they may have paid less attention than the work now deserves.

The other choice for students will be to sit a postponed Leaving Cert at some unspecified point in the future. That option – involving a ‘lost year’ for students – seems deeply unattractive and it is hard to see many opting for it.

One doesn’t envy their choice.