This afternoon.
Asked if the State exams will take place, [Green Party leader and Transport Minister] Eamon Ryan said: “The first priority is getting special needs students back but the second priority is getting Leaving Cert students back in school, and we will be able, in my mind, to do a written Leaving Cert.”
He said the Leaving Cert is “the fairest system” and it would be good for the mental health of students to hold it.
Meanwhile…
I’m sat here sobbing over this ridiculous minister for education. How dare you try to tell me my leaving cert is more important than the safety of my family & my health. #makepredictedgradesoptional #canceltheleavingcert2021 #LeavingCert2021 @NormaFoleyTD1
— Elliot M (@PJinxox) January 26, 2021
Eamon Ryan believes Leaving Cert exam will go ahead (Irish Examiner)
So no leaving cert then.
No way is it the fairest system. People can have an off day on the day of the exam. Switch to a continuous assessment model which counts towards 70% of your final grade. The final 30% can then be on the exam.
Its the way I did in college and was a huge relief going into the exams to know that you already have a good chunk of the points in the bag.
To be fair, if Elliot is saying “I’m sat here sobbing…” as opposed to “I’m sitting here sobbing….” he’s going to have a rough time during English Paper 1 & 2
Unless it’s the creative writing section in which case they will applaud his use of local vernacular to express the anguish of teenage life.
Just checked his feed, he seems to be spending all his time on Twitter, no wonder he doesn’t want to do exams
It is not the fairest system. 6 years of secondary school education shouldn’t boil down to a performance in an exam. Time for major reform including a reduction in the number of subjects, a proper continual assessment, and in the case of high-demand courses like medicine there should be interviews or other bespoke assessments done to make the final decision.
If you asked a group of doctors to devise a method to identify young people who would make good doctors they wouldn’t come up with the leaving cert.
I think that maybe you kind of took that slightly out of context. Unless you are suggesting that this year’s Leaving Cert class should go back and redo 6 years of secondary school to adopt a new curriculum.
yup it caters to a kind of person who can cram, then stay calm and spew back combined with being able to understand what exactly is being asked for in a question, I was great at the cramming and as a result did everything last minute with great results while my sister who worked much harder all year and probably remembers more of what she learned now to this day, but fell apart in exams, it’s really unfair
Deeply unfair exam. And as someone who performed (extremely) poorly Ryan should know. All the cramming in the world wouldn’t have helped him. And this is what is wrong with the Greens: Eamonn knows it’s a rubbish exam that puts rote learning over knowledge. If he was in opposition he’d be the first to say we should take this opportunity to redesign and reform the Leaving Cert, but once in power (albeit transport) he is promoting the impractical and perpetuating the impossible.
Every leaving cert student I’ve spoken to wants to sit their exam and doesn’t want a repeat of last year – I always hold a bit of suspicion for tweets like Elliots above that get an uneven amount of attention
Seems perfectly reasonable to have the LC students return to school in March/April and sit their exams in a controlled environment with their masks on – it’s not rocket science