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THE LEAVING CERT teaching model leaves pupils with a disadvantaged all-round education because of the pressure to focus on exam success, a landmark think-tank study has claimed.
With many classes simply focusing on practising previous exam papers, students receive a narrow learning experience as teachers aim to simply ‘cover the course’.
The ESRI study also showed students reporting a heavy workload, with a significant number doing more than three hours of homework per night to keep up. Pupils are acutely aware of the fact that the Leaving Cert is a “high stakes” exam with implications for their future, and many find it very stressful – with girls especially falling victim to feelings of pressure to succeed, the research revealed.
Almost half of sixth-year students go outside the school system and take private grinds in an attempt to boost their grades.
The research, called Transition or Transaction?, showed that decisions made in the junior cycle have a significant influence on Leaving Cert pathways – with subject choices and level allocations often impossible to escape once they are made. Moreover, students who struggle early on often find it hard to make up lost ground.
It also said that the Leaving Cert Applied programme offers more active learning – but there is a stigma attached to taking it in some schools.
The study’s authors called for students to be allowed to “pursue a number of more flexible pathways” which would be a way of “maximising students’ options for the future”. They suggested that a broader range of teaching methods and assessment modes should be employed, which might improve students’ engagement.
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There is no political will to change our school system. A smart economy has to be based on smart people. We won’t have such a thing as long as we have less than smart and cowardly, visionless politicians in charge. It’s a pity, when you consider how many teachers are in the Dail.
Because all our politicians are afraid of radical change. Unfortunately the world is changing, Out with the old fogies!
While it’s fashionable to say that all politicians are useless and afraid of change, I have to say that Ruairí Quinn seems very serious about pushing reform, and for the right reasons (humanist, not economic). He also seems to be taking in the research, which says that rote memorisation is a poor substitute for learning, rather than just making sentimental, uninformed speeches about “raising standards” as his predecessors did (as Ken Robinson said, “as if we should lower them!”)
The real resistance to change is going to come from teachers and others in the Department of Education, who seem to be permanently stuck with this failed behaviourist learning ststem.
I’ve been saying this for ages and am facing the dreaded leaving cert myself this year. It’s especially frustrating when the courses have very little in common with the college courses you want to choose.
It took a think tank to figure this out?
I could of done this research by talking to any of my friends; all have been through it all…myself included.
I remember nothing from my LC with the exception of subjects like English and History. everything else is forgotten as soon as I finished my last exam. its a points race and rather than teachers discouraging that, they home in on it and let students learn "what’s predicted for this years paper"
Ten years ago I under performed at the leaving cert (My own fault). Ten years on I have my degree and my honours degree. All thanks to the mature students programme where over 23s could go to third level regardless of their lc results.
However a massive overhaul of the Leaving Certificate is badly needed. It should be more like third level where marks are earned for work already done, not all focused on the exam itself. The pressure on students is phenomenal. Some can handle it better than others but it’s truly a terrifying time.
The amount of people I know, myself included, who studied Irish the whole way through school, passed the two state exams (jc & lc) and could never hold a peoper conversation in Irish. The exams were predictable and we all went in with prepared answers. 13 years on I could prob still write out my Irish LC essay but don’t ask me to translate it.
Teach some real technology classes. It is our future and we are years behind.
So they are stressed now, wait till the join the rest of us in the real world, kids,bills ,morgage need i go on i wish my main worry was a math exam. Oh happy days when the postman has nothing for us
What has your current stress got to do with reforming the leaving cert?
For a start we could keep compulsory subjects for the Junior Cert to provide kids with as broad a spectrum of subjects as possible. Once the JC has been passed we do away with compulsory subjects altogether. Allow the students concentrate on those areas that best suits their abilities. Also, our English, Irish and Maths subjects for LC are a farce. As has been mentioned above you can go through 14 years of learning Irish and not come out with anything except the ability to replicate what you wrote in the LC exam. It needs to be kept compulsory to JC level, but scrap the poetry and literature element for that course. Focus on writing the common language, oral and aural comprehension – the basic building blocks of the language. Then, if the student wishes to continue it to LC level introduce a double-class model – 1 class to focus more on the linguistic and grammatical elements, and another to focus on the literature. The same should be done for English: LC English is useless for those trying to get a job. At the end of the day we have kids coming out of school who know about Hamlet’s depressive side or Joyce’s almost impenetrable style of writing, but they don’t know the difference between “they’re”, “their” and “there” and don’t know when to use a comma, full-stop, apostrophes, etc. Allow those that want to focus on literature do so in a separate English module called English Literature, but improve the language skills (writing included) with a simple class entitled simply English. As for Maths..when I did Maths for LC level I started off at honours level. I got a 22% in my 5th year Christmas exams and realised honours Maths was not for me. I went to Ordinary level, the level just below Higher for those who can’t remember the system, and I got an A1 in my Leaving Certificate. There’s a massive gap between 22% in Higher Level and an A1 in Ordinary Level, so something is seriously not right there. And as for Religion – scrap it. If you want to learn about religion you should do so in your own time. That time slot could be used to boost other subjects such as history, chemistry, biology, geography, etc. It’s not like people will get a job out of Religious Studies.
How about we teach philosophy for the leaving cert?
Imagine a nation of critical thinkers, aware of the logic and process behind maths, science and society.
It won’t even enter committee stage.
Having freshly emerged from all the stress of the Leaving Cert and just about scraping the required points for my course I can safely say that it was, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst year by far of my life.
I didn’t work hard at all and my hours spent studying paled on what others in my year put in as I resent every single facet of the exam process. Spending countless hours doing rote learning for information which I will have no use or no benefit to me in the future annoyed me so much. All is does is shorten our life spans with the worry and in other extreme and unfortunate events, people take their own lives because they can’t handle the huge pressure placed on them.
Every bloody Thursday morning after the results are out, people are enraged at the Leaving Cert course but after a week all the giving out subsides until it rears it’s head again. Nothing will change unless the people in the Department of Education wake up and see the flaws. The problem lies exactly there though as the people running it are idiots who are afraid of change.
If anyone disagrees with me, please give me a solitary example of when I will ever be required to know the formula of a line in maths, to speak fluent Irish about my pets or regurgitating notes preaching of my love for poetry.
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I think a lot comes down to teachers not being prepared. In English, study of the exam texts takes place in 2nd year and 5th year for Junior & Leaving Cert respectively. This leaves plenty of time to get through all the drama, poetry and fiction necessary for passing the exams, and can all be done in one year. Spacing out the curriculum then allows teachers to actually teach English, not just the literature. Sadly, what happens usually is that the texts are not studied until the year of the exam.
“teachers not being prepared”,”study of exam texts takes place in 2nd and 5th year”.Some very sweeping and unsubstantiated statements here and then a big fat contradiction when we are told that ” texts are not studied until the year of the exam”.English tutor my arse!
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