Sir, – I have heard many promises that the new Junior Cert will avoid “teaching to the test”.
The statement is just put out there without any evidence.
No examples of how this happens are ever presented. A teacher teaches the curriculum which appears on the Junior Cert. I can’t see many predictive patterns in English Junior Cert.
I teach the entire curriculum safe in the knowledge that I don’t know exactly what is coming up.
But if there are patterns in the existing Junior Cert that lend themselves to “teaching to the test” any chance the media might dig them out, rather than trotting out clichés?
At present I don’t write Junior Cert papers. I don’t have access to them. Under the new proposed system I will decide project/test work. I will be the author, or perhaps, part of a committee of authors. Not only that but I will correct it too.
It would be terrific to live in a world where a teacher would not redraft student work or where a student might not enlist the work of others to redraft their work but sure as day follows night – it will happen despite all the well wishing in the world. – Yours, etc, BARRY HAZEL, Bray, Co Wicklow. Sir, – The Chicago public school system which educates 400,000 students each year made available all the data from its standardised annual tests of students in elementary and secondary schools from 1993 to 2000 to an academic study.
It used algorithm methods to determine if teachers cheated when administering these exams to their own students. The findings proved that 5 per cent of teachers had cheated.
This figure was considered conservative as the algorithms only detected egregious cheating.
The main reasons determined for cheating varied from career enhancement, self-esteem, and concern for their students.
No wonder teachers are concerned about the independence and fairness of the Junior Cert. Continuous assessment is very much a part of every teacher’s and school’s armoury but a once-off national standard test should be administered independently.
Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan should also know what every business person in the country knows about change management – it only works if the people it affects at least have a say in its development but, preferably, if they think it was their idea in the first place.
Why were the teachers not properly consulted?
Listen to the teachers. Listen to the parents . – Yours, etc, PATRICIA CRISP, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.