I have given permission to Deputy Horgan to raise the matter of the policy of the Minister for Education in relation to the standard of oral Irish in the leaving certificate.
Adjournment Debate. - Leaving Certificate Oral Irish.
I am grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to raise this matter on the adjournment. When I sought permission to raise it this morning the Minister indicated that he would be glad to have the opportunity to make a statement in the House on the matter. Although he did not use these words, he more or less implied, in the words of somebody accused, that he had an answer to all the charges brought against him.
No charge was brought against me.
The reason for my wanting to raise this matter on the adjournment is the intense alarm and anxiety created by newspaper reports — but not entirely by newspaper reports I hasten to add — in the past few days about the instructions believed to have been given by the Department's personnel to that small group of people who will be administering the oral Irish examination to students in the schools, starting from next Monday.
In particular, there was a report in the Evening Press of yesterday which, although I understand it was erroneous in a number of respects, carried the burden of some of the complaints made to me. In relation to the Evening Press report, all I will say at this point is that I believe two aspects of it are not necessarily accurate. The first is the aspect which indicates that the examiners have been told they may not start with easy questions and build up to harder ones. I belive that is inaccurate. The second is the implication in the report that, by starting on poetry questions, the examiners are somehow making things harder for the pupils than heretofore. I belive that has always been the case.
The main burden of what I want to discuss has been raised with me by teachers, not newspapers. The teachers concerned who have been at meetings with Department of Education personnel are under the distinct and unambiguous impression that they are being asked to mark the oral Irish examination this year more severely than has been the case in the past. The reason they are under this impression is twofold. First of all, at at least one of the meetings about which I was told, tapes of oral interviews were played and the examiners were invited to mark the tapes. In virtually all cases they were told that their marking was too light and would have to be harder. In the case of the most fluent tape played, one on which the student appeared to be almost indistinguishable from a native speaker, and a tape to which the majority of the examiners present gave an A, they were told that a more appropriate marking would have been a C. In relation to a number of other tapes played on which the student was obviously weak to some degree, the majority of the examiners would have given the student a bare pass and they were told that effectively that student should have been failed.
That is the evidence of their own eyes and ears as to what happened at these meetings. At at least one of those meetings the examiners were told there had been pressure —"brú" was the word used — from the universities, not from the Minister ironically enough, to increase the standard of oral Irish and of Irish generally in the leaving certificate and this was the reason why they were being told, advised, asked — I do not know what the appropriate terminology is — to be somewhat stricter in their marking than they have been hitherto. I would be very glad to hear the Minister on this point. It would be entirely inappropriate for the universities to bring pressure on the leaving certificate examiners and students in relation to Irish or anything else.
The leaving certificate is supposed to be what its name implies, a leaving certificate. It is not in essence, although it has tended to become, a form of entrance examination for the universities. Basically what is happening in this area is that universities are getting their matriculation on the cheap. They do not have to run matriculation examinations by and large because they are using the results of the leaving certificate. This is distorting not just the leaving certificate examination but also the whole curriculum of the second level school leading up to the leaving certificate. The leaving certificate is supposed to be an examination for children who are leaving school. The majority of children who are leaving school with the leaving certificate will not be going into the universities, and that is why it is inappropriate that universities should be bringing pressure, if they are bringing pressure, in relation to Irish.
What is particularly upsetting for the teachers and examiners concerned — and you can take it for granted that if it is upsetting for them it must be doubly and trebly upsetting for the students concerned — is that ten days before the examination they got the first indication of a possible change in the marking system or in the approach to marking this vital examination. It is normal in the Department of Education to discuss things with the schools, to discuss changes in particular with the schools, and to let schools know well in advance what kind of examination scene they will be facing into at the end of the year.
The schools are now under the impression that something is being done to them without consultation of any kind. The teachers who contacted me to express their concern about it have not been consulted. They do not know whether their school principals have been consulted. If consultation has taken place, there must have been a massive breakdown in communications somewhere along the line. They are beginning to wonder whether this is not the Minister's attempt to implement, if that is the right word, certain key sections of the White Paper on Education without having made the necessary investment in the schools to enable them to do the job he wants them to do.
In the section on Irish in the White Paper there is this sentence: it is obvious, therefore, that the examinations themselves must place greater stress on listening, comprehension and speaking. Who could argue with that? We are all in favour of that. If the Minister is to start applying the pressure from this end, from the examination end, without giving the schools the necessary resources, facilities, teachers, and so on, to bring the standard up to whatever he regards as being more appropriate than the present standard, he is going about it the wrong way.
Many teachers felt when the White Paper came out that it was a criticism of their professional standards in relation to Irish. They felt there was an implied criticism in it in relation to Irish and that the implication was that they were not doing a good enough job in teaching Irish in the schools, that the standards were not high enough and that in some obscure way they and the schools in which they worked were to blame for the fact that Irish is not more widely used in general as a medium of communication. Many teachers reacted angrily, some more soberly, but they all tend to think that the schools over the years have at least played their part in the necessary job of preserving and developing the Irish language at all levels and that it is unfair to attempt to make the schools the scapegoat for decisions that are made every day all over the country by different groups as to whether or not they will speak the Irish language in their daily course of business. If the teachers' fears about these instructions which they believe were issued from the Department are correct they fear that the Government are looking for better Irish on the cheap, by putting on the examination screws and by relying on intense competitiveness at second level and at the end of second level to ensure that the standard will build up without the Department having to make any investment in the personnel and so on necessary to secure the required improvement.
It is unfortunate that this has happened on the eve of the oral examinations and I appeal to the Minister to reassure not just the pupils but their teachers. There is a need to re-establish a kind of trust between the Department and the teaching profession and a belief by the teachers that the Department will not thrust them willy-nilly into a situation for which they and their students are not prepared. If the Minister can provide this reassurance and rebuild this trust, this is the place for him to do it and I am glad that the House has given him an opportunity to do it.
I am very glad to have this opportunity to reply to the allegations about the change in procedure and the variation of the standard to be required in the oral Irish test at the leaving certificate examination, 1981. The facts are in flat contradiction to the allegations made which were given wide publicity. I had my office issue a statement to the daily papers last evening and no paper I saw carried the statement. The standard and procedures in this year's oral Irish test will be the same as in previous years. No instruction to the contrary was given. The marking scheme to be applied in the test is set out in a document supplied to each examiner and it has been unchanged for many years. About 30 examiners' conferences are held throughout the country in order to explain the procedure and marking. These conferences are conducted by the inspectors, some 30 in number who monitor the marking during the test. The inspectors have their own preparatory conferences and the same arrangements were followed this year as in every other year.
This year, in addition, a number of tapes of sample oral Irish tests were played at the examiners conference in the interests of standardisation. These tapes were chosen from a range of recorded tests made by the inspectors and they covered different levels of competence in oral Irish. The marks to be given in those sample tests as decided upon by the inspectors in advance were explained to the examiners. These tapes covered only the conversation part of the test, and candidates, particularly weaker candidates, generally score better on the other parts, on poetry and prose taken from the prescribed text. The procedures this year are the same as in previous years. It was stressed this year as in any other year that all examiners must follow the same procedures.
The purpose of starting with the poetry is to give a candidate a chance to settle down. The candidates are asked to read or recite about ten lines from one of five poems of their choice. Deputy Horgan recognised this procedure and that there were erroneous statements published about this. The examiner first exchanges the usual minor courtesies with a candidate for instance in order to determine the candidate's name and so on. On first coming to the school the examiner introduces himself to the class as a whole. The examiner then proceeds to examine the pupils individually in the presence of a teacher or the school manager. After the initial preliminaries the candidate is asked to recite poetry, then to read a short passage from the prescribed text and to answer questions on it. The examiner then proceeds to discuss everyday topics with the candidate, choosing the topics which are best calculated to give the candidate the opportunity to display his ability to speak Irish. This procedure will again be followed this year and I cannot understand how any misunderstanding could have arisen.
Deputy Horgan said that he was depending not entirely on newspaper reports. I will make him an offer. If teachers misunderstood the tape session I will make available to them another tape session over the weekend if they get in touch with me directly or through Deputy Horgan. We in the Department cannot understand how they could have misunderstood what was perfectly clear, unchanged procedure.
They were told that they were marking too lightly and that is why there was a misunderstanding.
In relation to that, at the conference some of the teachers thought that the Department were marking too easily and they were asking for a stronger standard. Some thought that the Department were marking too severely and wanted a lighter standard. With reference to the tape of the native speaker who was from the Gaeltacht, the inspectors gave this person full marks but many of the teachers stated that they would not give full marks to that person.
I regret to have to say that I regard the reporting in this instance as a serious lapse from the standard traditionally expected from newspapers here. Young people in the schools have enough to contend with in relation to the normal and inescapable pressures of examinations without being needlessly and unfeelingly exposed to upset by unfounded and disturbing statements of this kind. I am not concerned with the source of the information. From whatever source it came it should have been throughly checked out with my Department before publication. I repeat the assurance given in my statement to the newspapers which was prepared in immediate reply to the scare headlines but which did not get a mention in today's morning paper. There will be no change in procedure in 1981 as compared with previous years and the standard of the test will be precisely the same as in previous years. Deputy Horgan asked for reassurance for pupils and teachers and I am giving that reassurance here. The Deputy also spoke of rebuilding trust with the teachers. I reject the "re" part of that word because I do not believe the teachers have lost any confidence in the Department. Finally, I have seen to it that a statement incorporating the facts as I have given them to the House has been issued this afternoon to the managers of all the schools.
I should like if Deputy Horgan would let me know which teachers are still not sure of the procedure or are still of the opinion that there has been some kind of change, whether major or minor. Officers and inspectors of my Department are available to disabuse them of this idea and to equip them to apply the test as it is intended — a humane test for the leaving certificate Irish examination.
Will the Minister state if there has been any pressure from the universities?
None whatever to my knowledge.
The Dáil adjourned at 5.25 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 7 April 1981.