Junior Cert replacement of ‘huge benefit’ to pupils
September 17, 2013
The replacement of the Junior Certificate by schools assessing their own students will bring major benefits, says the head of the organisation leading the changes.
National Council for Curriculum and Assessment chief executive Anne Looney said the impact will be mostly positive for young people in comparison to those now studying up to a dozen subjects for the Junior Certificate. “Students will have had a much wider range of learning experiences in school, more use of technology, lots of different kinds of assessment and not just written exams, even though they will have covered fewer subjects for assessment purposes,” said Ms Looney. “They are going to have to work a bit harder because the active learning, group learning, and project work mean there is nowhere to hide down the back of the classroom.” There is still reluctance among teachers about assessing their own students and the absence of a nationally certified exam after the first three years.
Ms Looney said there is also understandable anxiety among principals and teachers, but she said it should be remembered they will be judging students’ work rather than students. In order to encourage consistency across schools, samples of students’ work will be placed online to guide teachers, students and parents on expected standards. She addressed more than 500 school leaders at an event run by Joint Managerial Body, which represents 370 secondary schools, where the impacts on day-to-day teaching and learning, timetabling and developing short courses were discussed, along with the national literacy and numeracy strategy, and school self-evaluation. English is the first subject for which junior cycle changes are being introduced, with a final curriculum due out next month to be taught to children starting second-level education in a year’s time. It will set out the kind of school work that teachers should set and mark students on for the 40% of final marks going for assessment of oral, reading, and writing skills. JMB general secretary Ferdia Kelly said all schools welcome the student-centred focus of the revised junior cycle. However, he said, a day of training for teachers of all subjects on new approaches to assessment should be given in every school this year, rather than just to teachers of each subject as new curricula are introduced over the next four or five years.
“Every school should also be allowed appoint a teacher to work for 10 hours a week preparing materials to help staff introduce these reforms properly,” he said. Department of Education chief inspector Harold Hislop agreed that there is a subject-centred approach to professional development for teachers, but said it will be more balanced towards whole-school changes as training programmes are widened for more subjects. The new curricula in Irish, business studies, and science will be taught to students beginning in Sept 2015.
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