Time will tell according to a local school Principal when it comes to the proposals for reforming the Leaving Cert.
A shake-up of the exams will see continuous assessment making up 40% of marks from 2024.
Student representatives have welcomed the plans but concerns have been raised by teachers’ unions.
Shane Hallahan is Principal at Presentation Secondary in Kilkenny and he’s been telling KCLR; “It’s early days, yes there’s a few things need to be taken into consideration, I would certainly welcome that lessening of stress on students because I think that final, that terminal exam where there’s an awful lot of pressure put on them, I suppose what it will do is it will engage students maybe that bit more in fifth year and get them to focus that little bit more and I suppose time will tell and I would also caution that teachers will welcome this but they’re just that little bit nervous again of grading their own students”.
Eoin Houlihan is a Career Guidance Expert at the Carlow Academy agrees that we need to find out more about it; “Not really that clear what is ti going to look like, you know, it does have the 60% component for the final exam and 40% for continual assessment over the two years but very little other detail coming out of it so, I suppose, when you release something like that and you don’t give people the full picture of what it looks like of course people are going to be ‘what is this going to look like?'”.
Hear their conversation in full with our Eimear Ní Bhraonáin on KCLR Live earlier here:
