Professor Tom Collins:

My first point is that I do not think it is possible to have a discussion about assessment reform without discussing curricular reform. The two cannot be decoupled but assessment is the tail that wags the curricular dog. The task of reform then begins with decisions regarding assessment. As has been observed by Professor Looney, as the two-year senior cycle comes to a close, all involved in the cycle become consumed by the looming examination. It seems to me that the assessment debate might begin with the question of what it is hoped to achieve in the senior cycle, what needs to be given currency in the assessment process and what can be ignored for the purposes of assessment. but it should be borne in mind that what is ignored in assessment in upper second level comes also to be ignored as a serious curricular endeavour. This may be worth referring to discussion in a deliberative process such as Professor Looney referred to. The assessment debate, therefore, begins with questions concerning what the student needs to know on completion of upper second level, what the student should be able to do and how the student should "be" in terms of sense of self and as a member of the wider society. The learning agenda, therefore, might be summarised as one concerned with knowing, one concerned with doing and one concerned with being.

It is true that the traditional upper second-level focus has greatly emphasised knowing, has placed much less emphasis on doing and has offered little on the issue of being. This was reflected in, and reinforced by, the assessment approach, which relied largely on a written, terminal and summative exam that rewarded rote learning, cognitive intelligence, application to study and compliance. This assessment approach has usually ignored the usually formative dimensions of the extracurricular, whether in sport, artistic pursuits such as drama and music, which can consume a school in its transition year activities, for example, or other social activism by the student, all of which provide immensely formative opportunities for those students who participate. The fact that this activity is outside of the scope of assessment has meant that its potential contribution to realising the wider goals of the upper second-level experience has been greatly diminished.

However, there are other problems with this approach to assessment. The odds are stacked against poorer students and less well-resourced schools in this apparently fair process. The appearance of fairness legitimates the outcomes; the winners feel they deserve their results and the losers likewise feel they got their just desserts so those who come out on top are under no obligation to reflect on the starting-out advantages they had in the academic race and those who come out on the bottom are unaware that they were hamstrung from the outset. An intergenerational stasis emerges here where, even in a context of all boats rising, the small boats still stay small.

This becomes all the more problematic when leaving certificate results are used as the basis for progression to higher education. It is this role that now underpins the "high-stakes" nature of the leaving certificate - a characteristic it once had by virtue of the fact that most people finished their formal education at this point. However, most people now progress to higher or further education, which means that the programme of study and outcomes there now become much more important in allocating employment and career opportunities displacing the leaving certificate role in this regard. The points system, therefore, has a number of important implications for upper second level. First, it means that the programme is conducted with one eye on third level such that the developmental needs of the child at this stage in their education are subordinated to the requirements of third-level entry. Second, it crystallises the inequities that underpin second-level outcomes in third-level opportunities. In this way, it reproduces existing categories of winners and losers from the parental generation and transforms inherited status into achieved status whether that is achieved success or achieved failure.