LEFTFIELD:IN TWENTY-TWO days' time almost 59,000 Irish students will sit down to begin one of the most stressful examinations of their lives. The real stress, however, comes not so much with the Leaving Certificate examination, as with the points race that accompanies it.
The points race has become the great shadow over the educational experience of our young people. As an educator and the head of Ireland’s highest ranked university, I believe that there is an obligation to shout “stop”. At the moment, instead of being concerned about whether they are getting a good education, we worry about them getting enough points to do what they want in college. We must encourage a different kind of learning in Irish education, away from the rote-learning approach encouraged by the points race towards something that places a love of learning at the centre.
Flaws in the current third-level admissions system have been well documented. Of course, we get excellent students through the current system, but there are a number of recognised, perennial problems: first, the right student isn’t always matched to the right course. In a time of limited resources we need to ensure that we match up students, courses, and colleges as accurately as possible, across the sector.
Second, because rote learning succeeds to a certain extent in the Leaving Certificate, a lot of time is spent in the first year or so of university trying to inspire students with the new approach to learning, immersing them in a more sophisticated educational experience.
Third, and perhaps most crucially, we recognise that we sometimes miss out on students who would have the ability to thrive at college – academically and socially – but whose abilities are not properly captured in a crude points total. We know from first-hand experience that academic excellence does not always correspond to high points.
Via the Trinity Access Programmes, we have been bringing students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds to college through alternate means for the past two decades. The success of these students – in college and in their later careers – reaffirms for us that academic ability as measured in Leaving Cert points doesn’t tell the whole story.
We want to change the admissions system. But we don’t support decoupling admission to third level from the Leaving Certificate, and we view it as essential that an open and transparent system of admissions is retained. Rather, we suggest that the Leaving Certificate be just one of a number of different modalities used to identify students with the ability and promise to thrive academically.
It’s time to escape from the narrow-gate of a formulaic admissions system and consider other ways of admitting a diverse student body which is enthusiastic and passionate about learning, motivated and committed in its chosen courses, and with the academic ability and potential to be inspired by the educational opportunities before them.
So can we admit students using different methods? This is the key question and is something Trinity has been engaging with since I became provost last August. A major one-day conference on “University Admissions for the 21st Century” will be held in our humanities institute this Friday, with experts from Ireland and around the world.
We hope to bring forward specific proposals for reform from this conference. For example, many of the world’s leading universities interview prospective students, and attempt to assess the personal context as well as the academic results. But in Ireland there are fears that interviews would be seen as a way of excluding people, rather than being a genuine attempt to attract a more diverse student body.
Aptitude tests are another possibility, but the experience of the HPAT in medicine has shown that grind schools are soon established to “crack the code”, further increasing pressure on students to no purpose.
One option might be the use of personal statements or portfolios, which would provide an opportunity for the prospective student to share interests and experiences and give contextual information which could be assessed alongside academic results. In the US, holistic approaches have been attempted with success – for example, the “rainbow” and “kaleidoscope” approaches which measure student ability and potential for independent thinking. These should be considered here.
At Trinity we have been having a vigorous internal debate about how we might admit a small number of students (say, 10) on our courses using alternative methods.
We are prepared to test some of these pilots to see how they work in practice – ideally, some could be piloted across the university sector. President Michael D Higgins spoke recently in Trinity of the need for “a recommitment to original and emancipatory research which probes, investigates and challenges” the conventional wisdoms that have failed us.
As provost of Trinity, I share his desire to reaffirm the promise of an educational system that can enlighten rather than narrow the mind, starting with how we admit our students.
President Higgins has also articulated the need for universities to educate people with “the confidence to question failed assumptions, the imagination to consider bold new strategies, and the idealism to care deeply about the kind of Ireland” that we wish to live in.
It echoes the call of Bobby Kennedy, in a different time, for universities to provide “a spirit of honest confrontation” by educating active citizens who would attack the problems of the world with “youthful vision and vigour”. Now, more than ever, we need such spirit and such students.
Dr Patrick Prendergast is provost of Trinity College Dublin. Information about the conference, "Undergraduate Admissions for the 21st Century", can be found at tcd.ie
