New junior certificate bands will be fairer, Cork teacher says

Cork secondary teachers have welcomed changes to the junior cycle, as they gather in Killarney for the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) annual convention.

Education minister Helen McEntee announced changes to the Junior Certificate grading bands, which will come into effect immediately.

The new system sees marks of 85% or above (instead of 90%) earn a distinction; a higher merit is 70-84% (instead of 75%-90%), and a merit is 55% to 70% (rather than 55%-75%), while lower grade bands remain unchanged.

The Cork South Paddy Mulcahy branch of the ASTI has a motion due to be heard today calling for the bands to be “revisited, re-examined, and replaced with a fairer system”.

Member of the branch and former ASTI president Ann Piggott told The Echo that the announcement was welcome news, saying: “We’re very happy with this, it’s well overdue.

“With the old system, the top band was over 90% and only 2% were allowed to get that mark, which was disgraceful. Now, anything over 85% will be a distinction, which is much fairer for students who work hard and deserve it.”

The new bands much better reflect the A B C breakdown that was once used, she said.

“I’m also happy that the middle bands will be separated better than they were in the past, when students who got 65% or 74% got the same grade.”

Her branch has a second motion on the junior cycle due to be heard today also, calling for higher level and ordinary level exam papers to be available for all, except for Irish, English, and maths where higher, ordinary, and foundation levels are needed.

“I teach maths, and there could be very weak students who stand no chance whatsoever of passing the exam, no matter how hard they work,” said Ms Piggott. “A foundation class would mean they could still achieve within that level, and the other subjects should have a higher and common breakdown also.”

Problems

The conference’s first day yesterday focused on senior cycle, and Ms Piggott said: “We’ve had so many problems with the new Junior Cert, teachers are worried the same is going to follow when the Leaving Cert changes.

“We’ve had training days where someone will ask the most basic question, and they don’t get an answer — it’s like they’re changing it and they still don’t know what to. That’s why we’re calling for them to be delayed.

“For junior cycle, we do the projects in the classroom and they take three weeks, which is time we need to teach the course — we won’t have time to do them in school for Leaving Cert. It’s going to be stressful for students who will likely have all these projects due at the same time.

“If they’re taking the projects home, how do we know who’s actually doing them? AI could do their project in 10 minutes.

“Teachers are very worried because they’ll have to sign off on the projects, saying it’s the student’s own work, but they won’t know for sure.”