MAKING school more enjoyable for children in danger of dropping out is the aim of the new Junior Certificate Elementary Programme which is being introduced this term into 45 disadvantaged area schools. It is intended the number of schools offering the programme will be increased to 80 over the next three years.
Many children fail to achieve their potential at school or simply drop out because they lack literacy or numeracy skills or have low self confidence or poor self esteem. Similarly, school life is made difficult for some children because they lack the social skills which would enable them to interact successfully with their teachers or peers.
Other students find the transition to second level, where they are faced with up to 10 different teachers, problematic and confusing. This new programme is targeted at these children.
"The Junior Certificate Elementary Programme will be similar in content to the ordinary Junior Certificate but there will be differences in the way chat it is organised,"
says Albert O Ceallaigh, chief executive of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). "The ordinary Junior Certificate is subject based but this programme is more integrated and will give students continuity between primary and second level."
At second level students can usually expect to have 10 different subject teachers. These targeted students will be taught by smaller teams.
Students will take the equivalent of five Junior Certificate subjects he says, including the equivalent of foundation English and maths and a special programme in Irish which will he attractively presented.
The subjects will be integrated and thematic as they are at first level and some subjects (history and geography for example) may be taken together. Throughout the programme literacy and numeracy will be emphasised. "It hasn't been developed as a desk programme," the NCCA's chief executive stresses.
Classes will be interactive and involve a high degree of collaboration. Learning tasks will be set in contexts which are compreheiisible and meaningful to the individual student and the programme's content will relate to the students' ages and interest levels. Programme teachers are expected to be open to developing new approaches to their work and in service courses will be provided for them.
A significant and innovative feature of the new programme is the student profiling system, which provides individualised records of the achievements demonstrated by each student.
The profile consists of a series of statements which affirm that a student can do something or knows or understands something. Although the statements are largely based on the contents of the Junior Certificate syllabuses, students will also gain credit for a range of other achievements.
Teachers select those statements which describe the curriculum areas or cross curricular skills which either relate most to student's aptitudes or best address the obstacles preventing their success. These are given to the students as aims for the year and all their classwork, homework and performances in class tests count towards their achieving these statements on their final Junior Certificate Elementary Profile Programmes.
All students who have been profiled for at least one year will receive a certification folder containing a Junior Certificate issued by the Department of Education, attesting to the student's satisfactory completion of the Junior Certificate Elementary Programme and where applicable a list of exams taken and grades obtained. The folder will also include the individualised student profile and a reference from the school authorities. Even if students are unsuccessful in the Junior Certificate exams they will be entitled to receive the folder and their individual profiles, which will give them credit for the skills and knowledge they have acquired (which are currently unrecognised by the exam system).
AND early school leavers, who have been profiled for at least one school year, will also be eligible to receive folders containing their profiles.
of the programme is going to be demanding and will have implications for school organisation", warns Albert O Ceallaigh. "There will be a need for a co ordinator in each school (the Minister has allocated a quarter of a teaching post to each participating school for this) and teachers will need the opportunity to meet regularly as a team."
The programme has been developed by the Curriculum Development Unit of the City of Dublin VEC in consultation with the NCCA and the Department of Education and is based on a number of earlier pilot programmes including the Early School Leavers' Programme (1979-82) and the School Certificate Programme (1982-96).
Ballymun Boys' Comprehensive School in Dublin has successfully operated this latter programme with a group of 11 students for the last three years and is introducing the new programme in first year this month.
"We didn't totally replace Junior Certificate," recalls the school's principal Frank Byrne, but we added an extra dimension through the certification of all the skills the boys acquired. This gave them extra confidence, they felt special and they went into the exams with lighter hearts."
Introducing the programme is demanding in terns of time, Byrne concedes. The appointment of a coordinator is vital and sufficient time must be allowed for regular meetings of the programme teachers. "It involves a fair bit of planning the profiling of each child in great depth demands considerable thought, a lot of paper work and a great deal of time, " he says.
However, the programme should not be viewed as a stand alone attempt to keep children in the school system and break the cycle of disadvantage. It is only one of a range of inter connecting strategies, including the home school liaison scheme, designed to make school a better place for children, he says.
