Dr. Jim Gleeson:

I thank the Chairman for inviting me to make this submission. The brief I have had from the clerk since last February has been focusing on the curriculum-assessment relationship as it is. Unlike the previous two presentations, that is the focus it will have.

The good working relationship between the Department, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, and the SEC facilitates the development of assessment standards. While the NCCA is currently replacing its subject syllabuses with curriculum specifications, 29 of the 37 leaving certificate subjects remain in syllabus form. Due to the paucity or indeed absence of curriculum objectives in subject syllabuses, the development of performance standards therefore depends mainly on inference. The clear focus of curriculum specifications on the other hand is on higher- and lower-order student learning outcomes stated in behavioural terms. While this facilitates the development of performance standards, the move away from content is a cause of concern to teachers. The specific specifications also include information about assessment modes and criteria. The relationship between these curriculum documents and classroom implementation can be rather distant due to the complex nature of assessment and the backwash effect of examinations. It is noteworthy that senior cycle is now the only sector where students take terminal examinations after two years’ work.

When the joint Oxford University and Queen’s University research team analysed six leaving certificate subject exams in detail, it found three of them to be problematically predictable. Students also felt the exams were predictable while teachers did not. The predominance of lower-order outcomes emerges when you see that many students believe the exams are over-reliant on recall while teachers believe the content-heavy subject syllabuses we have encourage teaching to the test and the textbook. Draft marking schemes are prepared in conjunction with exam papers. However, since our grade parameters are fixed, when grade distribution problems arise the only option is to adjust the marking schemes. The SEC believes these problems are indicative of issues with the examination rather than the student cohort, so using expert judgments and statistics, that is, attainment referencing, it compares the attainment of the cohort in question with previous years' cohorts and candidates are then graded on their overall attainment rather than the performance standards for that subject.

Other than their value in CAO points, the meanings of particular grades are not capable of definition. In the interests of their relationships with students, teachers see their role in assessment as being advocates rather than judges. This is not necessarily an either-or dilemma but change can only happen under certain preconditions and where the authenticity of student responses is assured. That is a really important point. Ethical aspects of assessing one’s own students for national certification are of direct relevance to the Teaching Council’s code of professional conduct and the whole issue of teacher professionalism. There are obviously important lessons to be learned from the assessment arrangements used during the pandemic, from the implementation of the junior cycle framework and from the leaving certificate applied, LCA. For valid curriculum reasons the LCA was ring-fenced in 1995. In my opinion and with some experience in this field, one would need good reasons to change that arrangement.

In conclusion, might I say to the committee that when confronted with NCCA proposals for reform in 1995, the political establishment at that time demurred? The ball is in the committee’s court.