The high failure rate at ordinary level in the Leaving Cert should focus attention on the plight of underachieving students, writes Brian Mooney
All concerned have now received the results of this year's Leaving Certificate. For most students it has been a successful experience.
The numbers achieving honours grades on higher papers are similar to last year. Fears concerning biology results turned out to be a damp squib.
The real story of the examination is the number of students whom the examination seems to be failing.
Of the 53,000 candidates sitting the standard Leaving Certificate, almost 8,000 failed to turn up for the Irish paper. Of those that did 1,532 failed the pass paper. A further 5,271 sat the foundation level paper. This means that almost 15,000 students, who have been studying Irish for 13 years, have not reached a standard required to pass a lower-level paper.
Should these students be obliged to sit through a standard Irish curriculum every day they attend school?
If this was an isolated result, it could be seen as the unavoidable consequence of supporting our first language. But when viewed against the other results for this group, it forces us to evaluate the entire curriculum provided for these students.
In the ordinary level maths paper, 5,722 students failed. A further 5,296 took a foundation level paper, which is not accepted for entry in most colleges.
This means that over 11,000 students are precluded from many courses available post Leaving Certificate.
An 18 per cent failure rate in ordinary level biology, chemistry, history, and accounting, and a 13 per cent rate in physics is evidence of a major problem. It is time to ask the question, is the current curriculum available in most secondary schools suitable for these students?
When we consider that over 3,400 students drop out of school each year before reaching the minimum age for doing so, we are forced to evaluate the entire curriculum as it is delivered.
Some would suggest that I am advocating a return to the old technical school/secondary school system. I am not suggesting a return to the past.
What I am suggesting is that many children need a more practical, hands-on experience of learning, which is reinforced by a growing sense of achievement. The opposite is now the case for many of these students. The problem seems to have arisen as a result of a cultural arrogance on the part of the entire education system, which presumes that all children will succeed in an academic curriculum if they only apply themselves more fully to their studies.
Many of these students come from disadvantaged homes where there is no tradition of academic endeavour, and the resources to encourage study and examination success are non-existent.
As a society, we must pause and reflect on how we are going to extend the benefits available to students sitting the Applied Leaving Certificate to the 10 to 20 per cent of students whose interests do not seem to be served by the current curriculum.
Failure to address this issue will result in a continuation of this cycle of despair, as these students go on to establish families of their own.
Some parties to this debate blame the growing trend of high rates of part-time work, undertaken by students at weekends and on week nights for examination failure.
I believe that the levels of work undertaken by young people are driven by two factors. Firstly, in a consumer society such as ours has become, it is essential for young people to generate an income sufficient to survive within their peer group.
Secondly, and I believe as importantly, it is essential for every human being to be engaged in some activity for which they experience a sense of success, achievement, and praise.
It is from their part-time work, and not from education, that a large group of students get their sense of self-esteem. The challenge for all involved in education is to give these students that same sense of self-esteem within school.
By next Tuesday, the education debate will have moved on and we will be focused on the offers of places from the CAO.
Let us hope that the plight of the underachieving child, who may or may not survive in school until the Leaving Certificate, is not forgotten, until we are confronted with similar statistics this time next year.
Brian Mooney is president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors