THE ANVIL OF TERMINAL SCHOOL EXAMINATIONS

Increasingly throughout my career, first as a teacher and later as a school leader I have been exercised by the conundrum of how should we assess fairly within schools and, most significantly, at school leaving examination time.

For this terminal examination, in large measure, is the tool employed across the world to recognise the achievements, or otherwise, of 17/18/19 year olds.

It is an understandable mechanism, allowing thousands of students in any country, writing numerous scripts in a short period of time to have a result within a couple of months. Much of this is related to the demands of university entrance for those who wish to pursue such a path.

But is it fair, and do we accept it because it is utilitarian? Do we accept that students, unsuited to this type of assessment, have to struggle in the wake of those who are suited to it? At worst, is it not akin to an industrial assembly line process where ‘perfect’ products pass through the system and emerge bright and shiny and ‘imperfect’ products are tossed aside.

In June 2020 it will be 50 years since I sat the Scrudu Ardteistimeireachta ( Irish Leaving Certificate examination ). For a couple of weeks in that hot summer I wrote numerous examination paper answers in multiple subjects, striving to remember what I had learned over the previous two years. It was mostly a memory test, and I had a good memory. Peers who did not necessarily have a good memory performed less well. Having returned to Ireland after 30 years I was taken aback this past summer to observe that students of 2019 were doing pretty much the same, a half century later!

The cohort of student who wrote scripts in 1970 was emerging into a world of certainties in terms of employment and life expectations. For the cohort of 2019 this is a wishful vista. For those who choose the university route, some consistency remains but for those who do not dance to this drum, their way in the world demands ingenuity, perseverance, mental alacrity, entrepreneurial skills, collaborative abilities, breadth of vision and self confidence in bucketfulls. Now these did not feature in my senior school programme and, most alarmingly, do not feature much in 2020 either. And the Irish education system is far from being alone in this.

The mould which hammered out the cohort of 1970 is still working well, it seems, though the ‘marketplace’ has changed out of all recognition.

The most troubling aspect of all of this is that thousands of students who do not fit the uniform assessment process are being lost, in the sense that we are not recognising the other abilities and aptitudes they possess which will enrich them and the world around them.

There are calls for a much broader school programme to prepare students for digital and real life in the 21 century. Surely school authorities must recognise this and seek also to recalibrate the terminal assessment gateway to allow all students to show who they are and what they can do.

But then, there are the universities. Can they ever be open to recognising abilities alongside the strictly academic?