Axing of Junior Cert proposed in 2009 to save money

The abolition of the Junior Certificate examination and its replacement with a school-based assessment programme was considered by the then government five years ago as part of cost-saving measures, newly released official papers reveal.

Cabinet papers for the 2010 budget released on Monday by the Department of the Taoiseach show options for scrapping the Junior Certificate from 2011 were examined by the then Fianna Fáil-Green Party administration in an initiative aimed at saving €15 million a year.

Teaching unions are planning a second day of strike action, scheduled for January 22nd, over proposals by the current Government to introduce school-based assessment under reforms to the junior cycle.

Both Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan and her predecessor Ruairí Quinn have denied claims from teacher unions that their planned reforms were part of a cost-saving exercise.

The option for discontinuing the Junior Cert was set out in a "secret" government budgetary strategy memorandum for 2010 drawn up for the then cabinet by the former minister for finance Brian Lenihan in October 2009.

This is the first batch of previously confidential State papers to be released under revised Freedom of Information legislation which now allows for such documentation to be made available after five years.

The document says the examination has “diminished in importance, is overly dominated by written terminal assessment and has a significant negative backwash on what is taught and how students learn”.

Assessment

The document says if the exam was abolished it would be necessary to develop a framework for assessment and to devolve responsibility for certification to the school. “Considerable difficulty has been experienced in the past in securing the agreement of the teacher unions to adopt the assessment model,” it says.

Speaking of the current reform plan earlier this year, Ms O’Sullivan said: “It isn’t going to save any money that I know of. I’ve never been told that it’s going to save money.”

The memo also shows the government considered proposals to abolish the school transport scheme, and to introduce an annual €150 tuition fee for post-primary students.