Yesterday May 8th, the Department of Education announced their proposals for Leaving Certificate 2020, aimed at bringing about clarity for thousands of students. Having listened to the announcement and read the plan, it appears as though the days of clarity have just ended and the confusion has begun.

Hobson’s Choice – When a choice is not a choice

About 400 years ago, Thomas Hobson operated a company which hired out idle work-horses to customers. Soon after beginning this venture, Hobson discovered that the fastest and best horses were the ones most in demand from the customers and were becoming over-worked.

In order to prevent this, customers were given the option of taking the horse closest to the stable door, or no horse at all. This ensured that all horses got an equal amount of use. The idea became known as Hobson’s choice – where one of the ‘options’ is not in any way helpful. A variation of this system is in place in some taxi-ranks, where a customer must choose the taxi at the top of the queue.

In the context of the 2020 Leaving Certificate, the government have developed a new version of Hobson’s choice.

The choice is either:

1. Accept your predicted grades

or

2. Sit the leaving cert at ‘a later date, when it is safe to do so’.  Those who choose option 2, will not be able to engage with the CAO system for 2020, thus may not be able to enter college or further education in September.

The government and the Department of Education have had weeks to develop alternative plans for the Leaving Certificate. If this is the best they can come up with, then it is a very poor reflection on those in the relevant positions of power who decided this.

Based on the information released on May 8^th by the Government, there are also students who don’t have any choice at all, as predicted grades cannot be used in their situation. This mainly refers to some students who are studying a particular subject outside of school, or to external candidates.

Many of these external candidates will be students who perhaps failed a particular subject or didn’t study a particular subject when they were in school. These candidates will have put in many hours of study and self directed learning with a view to going to college or further education in September. It is not good enough for the government to effectively say to those students ‘tough luck, try again next year’. ALL of those external candidates deserve an equal opportunity to engage with the CAO system THIS year, and the government need to outline their plan in this regard ASAP. It should have been outlined yesterday, they had long enough to develop a plan.

I have made my views on the use predicted grades very clear. You can read them here:

Opinion: Leaving Cert Predicted Grades Unworkable

Following the revelation of the governments proposed grading plan, my opposition to predicted grading has been strengthened.

The Leaving Certificate has been the pinnacle of the Irish second level education system since it was introduced in 1925. The Leaving Certificate was the most incorruptible set of assessments in the Irish education system. It was objective, anonymous, equitable, impartial and sensible.

Until yesterday, it didn’t matter whether the candidate was the Grand-daughter of the President, or a son of the local drug dealer; from the time they stepped into the exam hall until they received their results, they were treated impartially and anonymously. In one poorly developed solution, the Department of Education have abandoned those principles.

Grade adjustments based on School Past Results

Each teacher will be awarding their own students a leaving cert grade, which throws up all of the obvious problems, but on top of this, the Department of Education will adjust marks based on how former students from that particular school have performed in the past.

To quote directly from the Department:

“We will compare the school’s profile of achievement at Leaving Certificate over the past three years to the national standards, to build up a picture of school performance”.

“Teachers estimated marks from each school will be adjusted to bring them into line with the expected distribution for the school”

In order words, students in some schools will have their results downgraded, based on the results of students who previously attended that school. Of all of the concerning aspects of this new plan, this particular element is the most abhorrent. By using this as a way of achieving ‘national standardisation’, the Department have confirmed they will discriminate against students in traditionally weaker schools, while weaker students in traditionally strong schools may get their result upgraded, simply based on the past results of the school.

In the Constitution of Ireland, the first and most basic of personal rights, is that all citizens shall be held equal before the law. To this end, the Equal Status Act was passed. Section 3 of this Act states that:

Discrimination shall be taken to occur where:

• a person who is associated with another person is treated, by virtue of that association, less favourably than a person who is not so associated is, has been or would be treated.
• a person is in a category of persons who share a common characteristic by reason of which discrimination may, by virtue of paragraph (a), occur in respect of those persons

Could the above law, be interpreted so as to outlaw discrimination against a person by virtue of the school which they attend?

It will be very interesting to see if someone with the required knowledge of law will legally challenge the decision to award predicted grading, particularly in relation to some of the issues discussed above.

The response of the teaching unions will also be very interesting. It is only very recently that some teaching unions undertook industrial action because they strongly objected to the idea of teachers having to correct their own students Junior Certificate assignments. It would be disingenuous for the same teaching unions to support this Leaving Certificate proposal.

Finally, if the government have received ‘advice’ to cancel the Leaving Cert, this leads to one obvious question:

Most schools have somewhere between 50-150 Leaving Cert candidates. If schools are not safe enough to host exams for 6^th year students in August, then how will it be safe for schools to re-open for all year groups in late August as is currently planned?

An exam setting is far more suitable for social distancing, than a normal school day setting with packed classrooms and crowded corridors.

In the meantime, if you wish to read the governments ‘plan’ for the Leaving Certificate of 2020, the link is attached here:

https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/d8920c-leaving-cert-2020/

Or if your looking for a satirical view on how some decisions may be made, just click the video: