It is now 1 December 1993. In just over six months time, in June 1994, 20,000 home economics students, 15,000 woodwork students, 15,000 technical graphics students and 15,000 music students will sit their junior certificate examination. For them it is a big occasion. The two major examinations, so far as they are concerned, are the two certificate examinations, the junior and leaving certificates. Here we are approaching the Christmas before the examination and the students and their teachers simply have not a clue where they are going. It is tantamount to putting somebody in a car and asking them to undertake a journey without telling them where they are going let alone providing them with a road map.
The teachers of home economics, woodwork, technical graphics and music were all assured when the junior certificate was launched that they were undertaking an examination, the course for which had been well charted and the examination for which had been well pre-determined. It was new, different, exciting and challenging but they were assured that no stone would be left unturned in terms of providing them with the necessary resources and back-up. The courses were duly determined and there was also a new and challenging dimension and that is that for the first time there was going to be external assessment of students' performances in certain subjects with a considerable portion of the marks awarded thereto. The teachers and the pupils undertook the new course with enthusiasm. However, as time passed, they quite naturally began to inquire as to what system of assessment would be used, what kind of marking scheme would be used for the assessment and what criteria would be adopted in order to determine a student's achievements and competence. Phone call after phone call, representation after representation, request after request have failed to elicit from the Department of Education the vital information as to what system will be used.
Teaching is difficult enough when working to a well charted pre-determined course. Studying for examinations is likewise difficult but is impossible if you do not know exactly at what you are aiming. To leave totally in the lurch youngsters who are undertaking the first State examination of their lives is unpardonable. The failure of the Department of Education to clarify the criteria and the procedures for external assessment in these four subjects is nothing short of a disgrace. The Department of Education has the manpower, the expertise and the obligation and it still has not delivered.
There are two other aspects. The NCEA has been very strong in its recommendation that assessment be taken on board by teachers. Yet, the Department of Education by the manner in which it has handled this whole affair has undermined any semblance of goodwill that is there on the part of teachers and students to assessment procedures. It has done irreparable damage to what should be a fundamental element in all future examinations and that is the awarding of a certain and hopefully increasing proportion of the marks and points using external objective, assessment procedures. One would have hoped that teachers would have been weaned on external assessment, although the teachers' unions and individual teachers had understandable anxieties in relation to whether school based assessment would work. Irreparable damage has been done to that process. The handling of this affair has been so bad that one would be forgiven for thinking it was deliberate.
There is the additional factor that, in the view of many people, practical subjects, despite their undoubted intrinsic and real value to students, have been treated as the poor relations. To relegate them to uncertain also-rans in the run up to a crucial examination when students do not even know how or where marks will be allocated almost seems like a deliberate attempt to relegate these subjects further.
I am now calling on the Minister for Education to instruct her Department immediately to issue by Friday of this week the official guidelines, absolute clarification and full details to each and every school.
