Since the disintegration in August of the A level results process in the four regions of the UK and Northern Ireland, there has been growing anxiety among Irish parents and students over how our Department of Education was going to avoid the landmines which blew apart the UK’s plans.
The announcement of the revised Irish methodology, which was approved at Cabinet on Tuesday, puts in place a route map through this minefield.
The key difference between the UK and Irish methodology is what is prioritised: in the UK case it was the results profile, in the Irish case the outcome for the individual student.
The original UK proposal was focused on producing a profile of results in conformity with previous years.
However, it did not take into consideration the effect such adjustments would have on the original predicted grades submitted by teachers.
The adjustment of grades downwards by the UK authorities to ensure the model produced the desired result, excluded smaller school groups which perversely turned out to be the more prosperous schools.
The result of this decision concentrated the downgrading process in disadvantaged communities.
Once this pattern became apparent the whole system imploded and students were awarded the original grades predicted by their teachers. This caused chaos in their university admissions system.
The Irish educational authorities knew that to proceed with a similar process would be a disaster and set about adjusting their plans accordingly. The key difference was to place the outcome for each individual student at the core of our planning process.
The simplest solution, which I suggested at the time, was that we adopt the assessed grades awarded by Ireland’s teachers and allocate two thirds of the available CAO places to this year’s cohort of Leaving Cert students, and distribute the remaining third of places to those applicants from previous years.
What made that proposal inoperable was the fact that there turned out to be a wide divergence among teachers in how they determined percentage marks for their class group.
Given that Irish teachers had never been asked to assess their students for State examinations in the past, and that nothing in their training or teaching practice had prepared them for this task, it is not surprising that the approach taken by teachers on an individual basis, and between subject departments within and among schools, diverged considerably.
The cumulative effect of this divergence was that the overall pattern of percentage marks submitted by schools and other educational establishments such as grind schools, showed a two hundred and fifty per cent increase in the number of H1’s awarded to this year’s cohort of Leaving Cert students.
To have simply awarded those grades without adjustment, would have been grossly unfair to CAO applicants from previous years, and to students from this year’s Leaving Cert cohort whose teachers took a less optimistic view of their students’ potential.
The decision was taken within the department to create a model which would bring the results of this year’s assessed grades process sufficiently back in line with previous years outcomes.
What was paramount for the new Minister for Education Norma Foley, and also her predecessor Joe Mc Hugh prior to his departure, was that we would not follow the UK example and use the comparison of previous years’ results between schools as part of their method.
Following the principle of putting the student at the heart of our system, the special unit in the department responsible for this process devised a system based on Junior Cert (JC) results.
They identified the JC result of each 2020 Leaving Cert candidate.
They then created virtual JC class groups based on the 2020 Leaving Cert class groups submitted by teachers in June. If for example one hundred students had taken their Junior Cert in a wide range of schools over more than one year in some cases, and were all now in a 2020 Leaving Cert class group in a grind school, their individual Junior Cert results were pooled to create a profile of results as if they had sat the JC together.
This profile was then compared to the outcome from the teachers’ assessed grade process for that specific group, and the adjustment of grades upwards and downwards was undertaken on that basis.
The rank order of performance within the class submitted by teachers is being respected, as is the proportionate gap between marks.
If a teacher left a ten per cent margin between their highest performing candidate and the second placed one, that will be respected in any adjustments made to bring the outcome as closely in line with previous years as possible.
What is likely to be the outcome of this process?
In numerical terms, 79 per cent of students will get the outcomes proposed by their teachers, 17 per cent will be downgraded and 4 per cent upgraded by at least one grade.
The adjustments upwards and downwards are designed to even out the differences in teachers’ assessments between those who gave each student their best possible outcome, and those who took a more realistic assessment of potential performance.
Some institutions may find that the exuberance of their teachers’ expectations will result in a wide divergence between the grades secured by those students on the 7th September, and the percentage mark which their teacher originally submitted which they will be released on 14th September.
Overall, while results will be somewhat better than previous years, the additional places which the Government has asked colleges to offer, particularly the 340 in high points courses, may ensure that most CAO applicants will be satisfied with the outcome.
At this stage the Minister would appear, with the support of her officials to have navigated a pathway though a very complex minefield.
Next Monday’s results and more importantly the college offers the following Friday, on September 11th will tell if their plan has worked.
Brian Mooney is a former teacher and guidance counsellor who writes about education