Vol. 418 No. 1
123 Mr. Crowley asked the Minister for Education the reason for holding the first and only service course for French and German teachers one month prior to the junior certificate examination; and if he will outline the benefit he expects the teachers to gain from such a course when the work is virtually completed.
The junior certificate syllabuses for French and German are the same syllabuses that were introduced for those subjects for the intermediate certificate examination in 1986. At this stage teachers can be expected to be familiar with them. The junior certificate has introduced a second level, the ordinary level, based on those syllabuses to cater for pupils who would be over-stretched by the full requirements of the intermediate certificate. The ordinary level in junior certificate French and German is, therefore, a less demanding version of the intermediate certificate in those subjects. The requirements of the ordinary level were illustrated in the sample papers in French and German that were issued to the schools some time ago. Various in-service courses have been held in these subjects since the revised syllabuses were introduced and teachers will benefit, inter alia, from discussion of the differentiation between ordinary and higher levels at the forthcoming in-service sessions.
