Professor Gordon Stobart:

My contribution will be to bring a comparative perspective to the leaving certificate discussions. It draws on my recent research report for the OECD on a comparative review of the Scottish senior secondary examinations. Ireland was one of the assessment systems reviewed in this.

The value of a comparative approach is as a reminder that there are many ways to assess senior secondary students. One of the problems of being embedded within a historic system is that we think that is the only way it can be done. It is a case of "you've got to do it this way". One of the key variables in this is the relative trust placed in teachers by society and the willingness of teachers to play a part in assessment. Ireland is very distinctive in this respect in the lack of teacher contribution to senior secondary assessment in terms of certification.

As Dr. Looney pointed out, exam systems reflect the history and culture of the societies in which they occur. When historically embedded, as the Irish system has been for a century, and where the English and Scottish systems have been going since the 19th century without much change in the architecture, they are difficult to change radically. When parents and their parents have been through the same system, there is a resistance to change.

An educational system's curriculum may see more radical reform as it responds to social change, as we may have seen across the world. Most changes reflect a broadening of the knowledge and skills that 21st century education requires. As we speak, France, New Zealand and Norway are all introducing new curricula to address the wider range of skills now required. We can change the curriculum but we find it much harder to change the assessment. As more students continue in education, the senior secondary cohort becomes more diverse and requires a wider range of assessment approaches. In many systems, including the Irish system, there is an increased role for vocational education. In France, we have the Baccalauréat professionnel, and in Norway, 50% of students take a vocational strand.

The Irish leaving certificate can be located within the British historical tradition, as opposed to the American, French and other traditions. The emphasis in this is on national subject-based external examinations at 16 years and 18 years. Most other cultures only examine at 18 years now. The exam system is nationalised and central, and it is based on unseen papers which have not been pretested, which we can contrast with the more psychometric approaches such as that of America. The system requires open-ended responses marked by trained examiners, and these are very distinctive to this British tradition. Ireland is unique within this system for having fixed-grade boundaries, with grades always against a certain mark. Elsewhere, these may shift according to the perceived difficulty of the paper. However, this fixed boundary is not unusual in other systems, such as those of France and North America.

Teacher assessment contributing to the final grade plays a limited role in the British system or no role in Ireland’s case, I understand. In other systems it plays a central role, and in Norway 80% of the marks are determined by the teacher. Even in the Baccalauréat professionnel, the French teacher contributes with marks derived from continuous assessment. Information technology currently plays a limited role in examinations yet offers the potential for broader and more imaginative assessments.