The demand by the main secondary teachers' union for a week-long closure of second-level schools during Leaving Certificate oral/practical exams was strongly opposed by the Department of Education, school management groups and parents' representatives yesterday.
But a Department working party, examining the serious disruption caused to schools by the orals/practicals, has failed to reach consensus on a new system.
The Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI) wants all schools to be closed for five days around Easter, but the Department is refusing to accept this. The Irish school year, at 167 days - compared to about 190 in Britain - is already one of the shortest in Europe.
The options still under consideration by the working party include:
Schools close for tuition but remain open for oral/practical exams for two days before Easter and three days during Easter holidays.
Language teachers tape/video their own pupils and forward the exam session for assessment.
It is now expected that the Minister for Education, Dr Woods will examine the proposals shortly. Any new system is unlikely to be in place for the new school year in September.
The current system for oral/ practical exams - in which teachers are seconded from their schools to act as examiners in other schools - is widely considered to be at breaking point. More than 1,300 teachers are seconded from their schools to give 110,000 oral exams in Leaving Cert Irish, French, Spanish, German and Italian every March/ April.
But this creates huge difficulties for schools which must cope without their teachers for two weeks during the lead-in to June exams. Secondary schools have been reluctant to release staff for oral exams because of the impact on their own pupils and because of the acute shortage of qualified substitute teachers.
In a recent report, the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD) warned: "Considerable numbers of students do not have the support of their own teachers" in the latter stage of their preparation for the Leaving and Junior Certificate exams. It also said that more than 45 per cent of schools which released teachers for oral exams in Irish did not have suitable substitute cover available.
Most educational systems do not encounter any such difficulties with oral/practical exams as these are given by the class teacher. Ideally, the Department would like to see language teachers examine their own pupils' oral skills as part of a continuous assessment. But the ASTI believes the tradition of objective, external assessment is valuable, especially in a small country where teachers could come under pressure from parents and others.
The Department maintains that its proposal, where teachers video or tape their own pupils and pass it for external assessment by an examiner, is a good compromise. But the working party has still to decide how best to evaluate oral language skills during a short taped/videoed session, if this option is pursued.