The culture around the leaving certificate is uniquely Irish: foreign visitors routinely baulk at the annual obsessing over what poets came up on English Paper Two, or how the number of students who got eight H1s is standard water-cooler conversation here.
Many sixth-year students – and opposition politicians – were dismayed by the announcement that the “traditional” leaving certificate would return this year, instead of another year of predicted grades alongside the written exams. Few were convinced by Education Minister Norma Foley’s reasoning that it would be unfair to apply a different assessment method to the one in four students who were part of the cohort which had their junior certificate cancelled and therefore have no one set of grades on which to base their predicted leaving certificate results.
For all its faults, the fact that the leaving certificate is standardised for every student in the country is the most powerful argument for keeping it. Fears of corruptibility are arguably the biggest impediment to overhauling the system: the ability to pull strings or get special treatment based on who you know is practically non-existent – something few Irish institutions can claim. It is certainly true, though, that wealthy students can get better grades by paying for private tutelage or going to a fee-paying school.
It’s something of a misnomer to say that the leaving certificate as we know it is set to return: students will be given more choice to account for lost teaching time during lockdown. Perhaps this is something that should be retained long term – the other clear fault with the current system is the sheer volume of information that students have to memorise. The stress that comes with assessing two years of learning in a three-hour exam is well documented, and any reforms should seek to ease this burden on students.
What reforming the leaving certificate must not do is compromise the integrity of the process. The introduction of calculated grades brought legitimate fears of pressure on teachers from aggrieved private-school parents who expect returns from their investment.
The leaving certificate begins and ends with public buy-in. If people don’t trust that every student is assessed the same, its functionality is seriously compromised.
