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After much turmoil, the leaving certificate for 2020 did not take place in the traditional manner and predicted grades were awarded in its place with our current sixth year students having already missed over four months in the classroom last year. Can the Leaving CERT go ahead in 2021? Well, earlier this week, lunchtime Lives spoke to Leaving CERT students who want answers as to whether the traditional exam is going ahead or not. This is Alicia from Dublin.

My school is completely prepared to go onto virtual learning. I just got off a meeting with my school and they just went through the plans of going back onto virtual learning. And I can't say like I'm so confident to go back onto online learning. But having Chadash hearing the decision yesterday, I feel the government still need to go a bit more further and we still need to get the options and we still need the option for predictive grades. We still need an answer in regards to our practicals, Oros projects, etc.

. I should have full trust in my government to keep me safe. And frankly, I feel the opposite. Nobody should ever have to put their education over their health, both physical and mental health. And I can definitely speak on behalf of myself and my fellow six year students. Our mental health is definitely being put on the line, something that the government said that they would protect. And frankly, they're not protecting it at all.

That was Alicia from Dublin speaking to lunchtime. Live now to talk more about this, where we currently are with the 2021 academic year, we have Brian Mooney, guidance counselor on education matters Ed. Good morning, Brian.

Good morning.

Now, first of all, let's hark back briefly to last year and the predictive grades.

I mean, did it deliver what we needed in terms of college applications, be it at home or overseas and all of that?

Well, the vast majority of students, you know, made it to college. And the minister, Mr. Harris, created 2200 additional places. Students who had previous years leaving cert got hit to a certain extent because points were raised because they predicted grades gave higher points. And in some data that I published in the last few weeks, we saw that it actually gave quite a considerable boost to students from Desh schools, where the number of students from Desh schools went up by over 400 in getting places in high point courses in universities, etc.

. In fact, the number of students from Desh schools who got places in high point courses exceeded the number from fee paying schools for the first time this year. And obviously, you know, we know where the protests came from when the grades were released last year. And as you know, there's an ongoing court case in which that has been challenged. So that is actually a huge part of the problem going forward, because this court case might result in some finding by Justice Meenan, which might actually affect the capacity of the state to provide a particular grade structure similar to last year.

So they're probably going to have to wait until after he makes his findings before they can actually determine whether even if they wanted to, they could go to.

OK, let's be devil's advocate and say that just as meanin decides about predictive grades were in some way unfair. And then we have a pandemic raging so we can't have the traditional leaving cert. So you can't have predictive grades and you can't have the leaving cert. What then?

Well, you see, it's not as if, you know, obviously you may have to have a system. I think we need to listen very carefully to what the Tannishtha Dave Ratke said yesterday. And again, it was reflected in one of those pieces you just played there. Ultimately, it will all come down to the level of infection. I mean, we had this debate last week in which we had two facts that were absolutely contradicted. We were saying on the one hand that we had the highest level of covid outbreaks in the 19 to 24 year old age group.

And at the same time, we were at one stage proposing to put 17 to 19 year old, leaving students back into classrooms three days a week to work with our teachers, which terrified the life of the teachers and also many of the students on the basis that the department, because of the court case and because of the sheer level of complexity of running predictive grades last year, are telling the minister, look, we are going to run this exam, come hell or high water.

Well, come hell or high water will depend ultimately on the level of infection and the capacity to be able to put children. When I say children, you're talking 17 to 19 year old young people back into a school with teachers in classrooms.

Is there any alternative to this? I mean, I know young people when they go for a job, interviews nowadays that they often have to do these aptitude tests online and they're timed. They could even be photographed as videoed as well. So in a sense that if everyone is being zoomed, could they do the exam at home?

In other words, you know, if they've got Big Brother, a big sister looking over their shoulder, trying to prompt the mind, that outpost, we're going to get things.

And I tell you where we're going to find out. We're going to find it out on the 21st of February, because, as you know, each year, students who are applying for medicine have to do the Hajj pass or the Hajj took place last year on the 29 to February. I think I think it was a Saturday. And obviously that can't happen this year. So what's happening is it's going to be proctored. In other words, students are going to be doing the Hajj apart from their own houses on a Saturday afternoon.

I think it's the 21st of February. And they are going to have to provide a computer with a camera. They're going to have to have a minimum of to make upload download. And this is all laid out in the literature. And there are many parts of this country that do not have those level of facilities. So, you know, how can we guarantee that if we go to such a system as you're outlining that the capacity with every home in Ireland for a student decision to leave the state is there to enable that to be done seamlessly.

Now, last year, we didn't have the leaving cert and there were all sorts of reasons given why we couldn't run it. And mostly it was public health.

At the same time, we know that you have schools that have secondary schools first year to sixth year.

Yes. And if you don't have the junior cert, let's let's decide.

You and I will scrap that because it might be a bit pointless in a pandemic, but therefore, we've got the resources of an entire school to cater for just one sixth of that school population.

Correct. Surely it would be possible in the summer with open windows, wearing masks and so on, hand sanitizer on every exam table that we could run the exam, just do it in a very safe way.

We can pass and there is no there is no issue that we wouldn't be able to do that. The issue relates to whether you have treated every student fairly in getting to that point, that everyone is deemed to have had an equal opportunity to perform at that time. The problem isn't that by June we will be in a position to run the exams. You're absolutely correct. Of course we would be. The question is, having missed four months of school where you have had an unequal treatment by virtue of technology or the engagement of individual teachers or schools or whatever, that we are now back in this same scenario.

And the longer it goes on, the longer we're in a situation where you're saying that a particular group of students who had a fantastic quality of service from their teachers have had no problem with technology in terms of sourcing, online classes are now going to sit the same exam as students who have no I.T. facilities at home or the teachers claims not to have I.T. facilities to be able to engage in online teaching, and that therefore, you had a gross unfairness in terms of preparation.

But the fact you can put the two of them into a room now perfectly safely to sit the exam, the question is about fairness and preparation and not the ability to sit the paper.

I mean, that does exist, though. Every year some people have a great maths teacher and other people have a terrible science teacher.

And, you know, that's that's an inequality that that is like the issue of inequality as opposed to the fact.

I agree totally, Brian. But but those inequalities can exist. And they did address the Desh inequality in a sense, when they did predictive grades.

But they have broadened the whole exam question philosophy isn't that they're going to instead of saying you've got to do five out of the eight options here or whatever it might be that you do five out of 15, and that that allows you to be very good at something that you definitely know is going to come up.

Yeah, and we're in a situation now where a lot of the papers, as had been revised in recent years, have these ongoing components. And all of those many of those were actually due in in the next few weeks. And the department have now said that effectively all of those will go back by the number of weeks the schools are closed from the 7th of January going forward. So if the schools are closed for three and a half weeks or six and a half weeks, but you get to a point where all of that starts to logjam.

You know, people are talking about that. The Mock's, you know, Godwill democracy. I mean, this is nonsense. And marks, you know, marks are very recent phenomenon. They are not in any way dependent. The system is not dependent on marks. And in fact, I would suggest that given that we've lost so much time, you know, students, if they do this time on the margin, just forget about it.

Just stop with this. Absolutely. Issue with the aura's is another one. Are we going to take 600 Irish teachers out of the system for a fortnight, having them going around to other schools, administering the aura's and their own children in their own? Houses, you know, being supervised by who you know, in a normal year, you just suck it up because obviously the orders are done in school time again. We might have to, as you suggest, possibly do an online system or of one school doing the aura's for a school close by.

I don't know. There are ways in which we can save time in the system. If we start to see a window opening at the beginning of February when the numbers of infections come down. The problem arises is if we get to the beginning of February and we still have very high numbers in ICU and we still have very high infection rates among that cohort of, you know, 1928, etc., then we get to the question, at what point do you call us and say we cannot operate this system because the level of, you know, disadvantage from certain groups becomes so great?

You know what?

I pointed the way Brian Brian here is a very sensible suggestion, although unhappy for many either students or teachers or parents, why not just run the Leaving CERT in September?

Obviously, you know, it does create delays for colleges and so on and college entry. But by that stage, we're told four million of the population will have been vaccinated, which is enough to give us herd immunity. So why not just say it?

Now, listen, this is our target. Looks like it's great. So first to September. The Leaving CERT begins.

Well, we had a plan, if you remember, in the distant past last summer, the schools were planned to open for a fortnight in July and teaching was going to take place for examination students. And if we were going to run the exams in September, would we have to get the agreement of the teaching population to work through the most of the summer to prepare them? Or would they all finish up at the end of May in their normal summer holidays and the students be expected to prepare themselves over the summer?

These are not normal times and the unions better get in in line and sort it out.

Yeah. Yeah, indeed.

As you have many times, look, we'll come back to you on this because it is an evolving situation. And as the numbers go up or down, return to schools happen or otherwise, obviously the scene will change. So, Brian Mooney, for the moment, thank you very much for joining us. Guidance counselor and editor of Education Matters a yearbook.

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