IT’S THAT TIME of year when the age-old debate as to whether the Leaving Cert has been “dumbed down” once again crops up.
Figures from the State Examination Commission show that the percentage of students securing higher grades has gradually increased in the last three decades.
But if we look at results for the three mandatory Leaving Cert subjects over the past 15 years, only one, Irish, has seen a sharp increase (77.8% to 88.8%) in the percentage of students achieving higher level honours results (A, B or C).
The percentage of honours results for maths, in contrast, has gradually declined (76% to 72.6%) since 1999. The most common maths grade among last year’s Leaving Cert students was a C2, compared to a B3 for English and Irish, for example.
Here’s another version of the graph with the left axis for 0-100% >
If we take a wider view, however, cumulative grade increases become more obvious.
Between 1992 and 2006, the rates of higher level A and B grades increased by 144.2% and 52.2% respectively for the ten most popular Leaving Cert subjects, according to research by co-founder of the Network for Irish Educational Standards Martin O’Grady. The IT Tralee lecturer, a long-time critic of grade inflation, found that there was increase in combined A and B grades for all 24 higher level Leaving Cert subjects over the 14-year period, with an average increase of 54.7%.
But do better results point to lower standards in second-level education? David Duffy, Education and Research Officer of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, doesn’t think so. Improved grades reflect how well students are being prepared for exams, he argues.
They get great support from family members and teachers, despite the fact that recent times have been very turbulent for families and public service provision.
Academic John Walsh from Trinity College Dublin, who specialises in Irish education history, believes that grade increases are not necessarily by-products of a “dumbed down” exam system.
Both students and teachers have become better at managing exams. [The Leaving Cert] always rewarded rote learning and cramming more than critical thinking.
Complaints about falling standards are oversimplified in that they don’t take changing student demographics into account, he added.
Rob Chaney, a maths teacher at CBS Thurles, also disputes claims that the new Project Maths syllabus expects a lower standard of students. The students sitting this year’s Leaving Cert maths paper are simply being tested on different, more practical skills, he said.
According to Chaney, the record level of Leaving Cert students sitting higher level maths this week – more than a third this year compared to 27% last year and 16% in 2011 – is a result of the introduction of bonus points rather than a supposedly easier syllabus.
But has the increase in higher level numbers had any impact on standards in the classroom? Not really, he said.
There have always been weaker students in every classroom. The difference now is that, in a medium to large school, there might be two rather than one higher level class. The ratio of weak to strong students would still be the same, though.
Even the Leaving Cert’s supposed predictability has been challenged in recent weeks, with the publication of an independent report earlier this month that found the issue to be “not very problematic” across six sample subjects. Exams could be not be pre-empted to the extent that is often assumed, according to the Queen’s University Belfast and University of Oxford researchers.
However, they conceded, greater efforts should be made to reduce students’ overreliance on rote learning.
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