QUESTION & ANSWER

Q. My son is sitting the Leaving Cert this year and after reading about the lost marks in the art exam I am very worried; do you really believe that students get a fair deal in the Leaving? How do I as a parent know that they are not regularly losing exam papers? - Co Kerry mother.

A. I suppose the short answer is that you don't know and you cannot be guaranteed that it won't happen. No system, however secure, is totally foolproof and no matter what systems you have you have to take the possibility of human error into account.

However, I do believe that on balance, the checks and safety networks surrounding the marking of the Leaving Cert are secure. And I would say that parents and students should feel confident that they will get a fair deal.

There has been the odd glitch in the past and there will be in the future, but that is inevitable.

The main reason that the problems occurred with art - and have occurred on occasion in the past with this subject - is that it involves pieces of craftwork being moved around the place and it would seem to indicate that subjects involving practical projects would be best assessed on site in the schools as Junior Cert art is.

If I were sitting the Leaving Cert this year, I would not worry unduly; when you have a public debacle as they have had this year, you can rest assured that every check and balance will be doubly securely operated this coming year!

In addition an outside body, the Price Waterhouse consultancy, is looking at the system for the first time. They will make recommendations on any necessary tightening up and the Minister has promised to implement these recommendations.

One teacher has suggested to E&L that there should be an exams ombudsman. That, in addition to the re check procedure, there should be a permanent outside body or person to whom schools could appeal cases where they could show reasonable grounds for concern even after the rechecks I'm talking about say a case where a student has always got As and Bs and suddenly gets a D in the Leaving Cert and is not upgraded on a re check. But honestly, would not worry if I were you.

Q. I am interested in the newer courses you referred to in the Countdown to College column recently. Is there any book you could recommend which would give details of these courses? - Co Wexford student.

A. The National Council for Educational Awards (NCEA) publishes a book called NCEA Directory of Approved Courses each year. The NCEA is the body which sets standards and makes degree, diploma and certificate awards in the RTCs and the DIT.

The book gives a good, readable overview of the entire RTC sector. It is well put together. It's colour coded, for example, with business courses on pink pages, science courses on green and so on.

There are a few succinct paragraphs describing each course and outlining the career opportunities which can result from it and also further study options.

Unfortunately, there is not a similar publication for the universities. In their case you need to get onto the individual colleges and get copies of their college, faculty and course brochures. Your school guidance counsellor will have copies in the guidance/careers room. But it is useful to get your own copies. Some of the university brochures are very well produced and are user friendly - a few are quite awful and unreadable. Ring or write to the universities and ask for the admissions office.

The NCEA directory costs £3.50 or £4.00 through the post to include the postal charge. It's available from the NCEA at 26 Mountjoy Square, Dublin 1. Tel. (01) 874 1526/7/8.

Q. I have a friend who is an English trained teacher currently teaching in Northern Ireland. She would like to move to the Republic. I gather the rules on English trained teachers have changed. Could you let me know what the new position is? - Co Donegal teacher.

A. Your friend will probably find it reasonably easy to find employment here. Schools in a number of areas experience quite a lot of difficulty in finding substitute and temporary trained teachers. She would almost certainly have to start with such substitute work - but then so do most trained teachers emerging from the colleges of education here.

The old situation was that - an English or Northern Ireland trained teacher had to sit a special Irish exam before she could be hired as a national teacher in the Republic. The Minister for Education has now changed the rules so that such teachers may be employed by a national school here for two years without sitting the Irish test. At the end of the two years, however, they must then sit the Irish test, thus giving them time to work on their Irish.

This is partly a response to the shortage of primary teachers here and partly a cross border initiative - removing some of the barriers to easy movement of teachers between both jurisdictions.

Incidentally, it appears that the one year "crash" course to train graduates as national teachers will not be held this year. No final decision has been taken this year so far but the indications are that the Department of Education feels that the manpower needs will be met without training graduates.

Q. I have a daughter who wants to do physiotherapy, but the points are astronomical. Surely the sort of academic, studious girls who can get six As in the Leaving Cert are not necessarily suited to physiotherapy? Should they not have interviews or suitability tests? Or create more study places? - worried father.

A. Yes, the points for physiotherapy are crazy and, no, it is not a career which necessarily requires people of such high academic ability - though I have yet to come across a career where intelligence is a disadvantage!

But it is not the colleges which set the points, it is the students. As long as so many high ability students find physiotherapy an attractive career, the points will remain high. You say in your query that physiotherapy is not that terribly well paid; you say that physiotherapists work in a more junior capacity than doctors, yet students need more or less the same points to get into medicine as into physiotherapy.

The issue, however, is not what points it takes to get in, it is the attraction which that course and the subsequent career has for young people, and physiotherapy certainly attracts young people. It is also the case that there is a growth in private consultancy and that sports physiotherapy is expanding.

Interviews? Can you tell me how you would devise an interview which would tell you which 40 out of hundreds of 18 year old applicants would be most suitable for physiotherapy? What qualities would you look for? And how could you differentiate between candidates from medical backgrounds who had been well rehearsed and well prepared and those from, say, working class backgrounds with no opportunity for such preparation?

And have we any guarantee that the articulate, talkative interview candidate will make a better practical physiotherapist than the quiet, shy person who has difficulty projecting herself?

And why should we consider interviewing applicants for physiotherapy, radiography and medicine and not do it for teaching, accountancy, engineering, computing? Are applicants for an arts degree not as entitled to have themselves assessed through interview as applicants for physiotherapy?

With regard to creating more places, there is also a problem. In the main medical areas college places have been kept roughly in line with the manpower situation. Flood the market very quickly and you end up with unemployed physiotherapists. That would probably reduce the popularity of the career and reduce the points - but in the meantime the Government would invested money in expensive additional facilities in order to create a cohort of unemployed people.