Provostial candidate Linda Hogan has called on Minister for Education Norma Foley to “announce sensible arrangements” for the leaving certificate, amid ongoing uncertainty around the exams.
Hogan is one of three candidates who have confirmed to The University Times that they will be nominated to run in the upcoming provost elections.
Hogan wrote on Twitter today: “Calling on Minister for Education @NormaFoleyTD, her Department @Education_Ire and Cabinet to announce sensible arrangements for the Leaving Cert to reduce stress and allow students, their schools and universities to plan.”
Hogan’s statement comes after Provost Patrick Prendergast called for a “rethink” of the leaving certificate, criticising “over-reliance on a written final exam, and the under-use of other complementary forms of assessment”.
In an op-ed published last week in the Irish Times, Prendergast said that while “it may not be time yet to fully de-couple the Leaving from college entry”, it is time to consider “assessment spaced over the two years of the senior cycle” in addition to the traditional set of exams.
Whether this year’s leaving certificate will go ahead has been a major bone of contention among education stakeholders in recent weeks.
Last year’s leaving certificate was cancelled entirely after students missed several months of school due to public health guidelines at the time.
Instead, students were offered courses based on a set of predicted grades – a decision which was mired in controversy for months afterwards.
The grades were awarded to students on the basis of a number of factors – such as class rankings, students’ performance in previous assessments and other indicators.
As a result, grades were inflated – in Irish, the number of H1s this year went up from 6.1 per cent last year to 9.1 per cent, and H1s in English increased from 3 per cent to 4.3 per cent.H1s awarded in mathematics increased 2 per cent from 6.4 per cent to 8.4 per cent.
Furthermore, due to a coding error, however, thousands of students were awarded incorrect grades, leading the government to offer students a place in a course they originally missed out on, if their new grades met the requirements for that course.
Last month, Hogan, an applicant for the role of Provost, confirmed to this paper that she had successfully cleared the interview stage of the process, and can now be nominated to run.
Hogan is currently Professor of Ecumenics and was Vice-Provost from 2011 to 2016. Her tenure saw Trinity deal with the fallout of the 2008 financial crash and its impact on higher education.
