Cork teacher says moves to make changes to the Leaving Certificate has colleagues 'concerned' 

POTENTIAL issues and pitfalls from the proposed changes to the Leaving Certificate curriculum are to be discussed by secondary teachers attending the Association of Secondary School Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) convention this week.

The convention will hear a motion 'that curricular and assessment policy changes can have significant unintended negative consequences for students and the education system.'

Cork English teacher and member of the ASTI Standing Committee Executive, Conor Murphy told The Echo that the Minister for Education’s proposal that 40% of Leaving Certificate subject grades be made up outside of the written exam could bring about several issues.

Mr Murphy said the move “has teachers concerned” adding “while for some more practical subjects it’s necessary, as an English teacher I don’t see how it would be equitable.

“Students have different resources and study space available,” he said, explaining that while his daughter has a whole room to work in, “I’m teaching some students who have to try grab a space at the kitchen table just to get their homework done, so there’s an inequity between two individuals.”

Artificial intelligence 

Another major issue is the role artificial intelligence could play in some student’s projects as they completed them without an invigilator watching.

AI is already posing problems with homework, he said, explaining, “as a teacher, I might be able to recognise some AI in some classwork, but I might not be able to recognise it in another.

“Even if I do recognise it, if I say ‘Johnny, this is AI’, if he says ‘no it’s not’ and his parents believe him, what recourse do I have – there’s nothing I can do,” Mr Murphy said.

Workload

The third concern is the additional workload for both students and teachers, he said, explaining that the way the Leaving Certificate sits currently, with practical components in a few subjects, “there’s students not coming into school because they’re prepping for projects”.

He added: “If they have one in every subject I can’t imagine the stress on top of studying for the exams.

“If there is an additional assessment component, we would have to digitally upload all of these to State Examinations Commission – that shouldn’t be the subject teachers’ problem.

“It’s also a huge amount more work again for teachers, paperwork is already mounting up in schools – teaching has totally changed in the last 25 years, the amount of work that needs to be done is massive.”