Results of the Junior Certificate issued to schools yesterday are generally impressive.
A healthy majority of students across a wide range of subjects achieved honours in higher, ordinary, and foundation level. The figures tend to confirm the encouraging results of a recent OECD survey which found that 15 year-olds in the Republic are among the brightest students among leading industrialised nations.
There are some worrying trends. At ordinary level, the failure rates in European languages were high. Over ten per cent failed ordinary level French, German and Spanish. In mathematics and science subjects, the disturbing trends evident at Leaving Certificate are mirrored in the Junior Certificate results, with high failure rates at ordinary level. There is a compelling need for radical curriculum reform to engage students more seriously in these subject areas.
Publication of the results has raised fresh questions about the future of the entire Junior Certificate examination. It is unloved among educationalists. Many complain it has become no more than a mirror-image of the Leaving Certificate. The opportunity to provide an examination which puts an emphasis on flair, innovation and creativity for 15 year-olds has been lost.
There is some justification in these complaints. The examination's format is much too rigorous. Like the Leaving Certificate, it tends to reward the students who can recycle streams of information in a coherent way against the clock. It would be good to see a greater emphasis on project work. Students should gain some reward for social, sporting, or cultural achievement. Students could be assessed by their own teachers over the three-year cycle - instead of facing the one examination in each subject.
The Junior Certificate does not present a rounded picture of teenagers' achievements. This has been recognised in a plethora of reports - including one from the Department of Education itself - but reform is still awaited. Nevertheless the examination does provide some focus for students and it helps them to build up academic momentum towards the Leaving Certificate.
The Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, has given encouraging signals he intends to shake up the cosy complacency that is often a feature of the education sector. Reform of the Junior Certificate would be a good place to start. With a dash of vision, the minister could retain all that is good about the examination while giving it a new vigour.