Leaving Cert 2021 Grade inflation

I did the lc in 2008 and I thought it was too easy then. It should be almost impossible to get an 'a' in a subject. Maximum points should be achieved by a dozen people per decade. Now you have kids competing over 5 points for a course, if the exams were more difficult we would get a clearer differentiation between students ability. The one thing I did find hard about the lc was the breadth of it. It was exhausting to cover 8 subjects in 2 weeks and some with multiple papers. Very stressful. Inflation/deflation is all irrelevant since the cao is supply and demand. It's the anonymity that makes the lc successful. I know some people underperform in the exam but others over perform compared to their class testing and that should be rewarded also.

The HPAT (UCAT in the UK) exams for entry to the UK are assessed like that.

Good work should be acknowledged. If a student deserves the A, they deserve the A. Simply downgrading to maintain “integrity” could be very disheartening too for the students.

It is far more meaningful to try and see where a person falls on the distribution curve relative to their peers. Grades will go up and down. But there will also be a normal distribution curve of results.

I think the same thing applies with the awarding of 1:1s in college. I know that in some professions, when you apply to a graduate programme, they look at ranking in the class, rather than the grade. For example, you may have somebody in the top 5% who has a 2:1 and somebody else who is in the bottom 50% with a 1:1. Centiles give a lot more information, in my humble opinion

Is that not what the new system of H1, H2 etc is supposed to do. Enable more differentiation between pupils especially at the top end. I know in the UK the A* grade was introduced for that reason.

An A is really an arbitrary grade, it only has meaning when you consider what proportion of pupils are at that grade.

Ultimately pupils are competing with the other pupils in the cohort not the exam.

For that reason it is going to be very unfair for 2022 LC students (my daaughter is one) to be competing with 2021 pupils applying next year, assuming LC goes as normal this year and grades/points return to more normal levels.

I think maybe someone with 2021 points should have to achieve say 2022 point plus 5% to get on a course. This should mitigate against the grade inflation from this year.

My point is about inter-annual variation in the amount of points awarded. There has been an increasing trend of awarding higher points over the last 10 years. This has nothing to do with differentiation. I have mentioned in a previous course why differentiating too much (ie at a percentage level) at a subject-level would be way too fraught with litigation and a logical nightmare.

A brilliant student 4 years ago may have received 550 points, which is at the 95% centile. However, if that person was to compete in the 2021 CAO, their 550 points will not be sufficient for the top courses. Yet, somebody in the top 5% from 2021 will have achieved 605 points. Thus, the students from 2017 will not be playing on a level playing ground to 2021’s cohort.

Now, imagine if the 2022 grades follow the pattern of 2017, then somebody who has done better than 95% of the exam candidates will only receive 550 points. They will be forced to compete against the group from 2021 with the high points who are reapplying to the other courses.

5% is an arbitrary figure. It won’t solve the problem. And what about the 2.32% of all 2021 candidates who received 625 points. You cannot penalise them. Nor can you add on 5% to 100%. So you are stuck. Furthermore, it won’t really account for the varying degree over the years of grade inflation. If you compare 2010 to 2015, and 2015 to 2020, the results are higher as time goes on. So, you cannot just select a random number to compensate.

For me; the fairest thing would be to award the CAO courses based on where the person is on the standard distribution curve of their aggregated LC marks. So, regardless of the year, somebody in the top 1% will receive their top choice

The Drumcondras for primary education are all centile based (at least they were the last time that I heard)

I am not sure if that is contradictory to my point. I am saying that if you make the exams more difficult only those with extremely good problem solving skills(in the example of math) will get the highest grade as opposed to arbitrary "excellence" where we nitpick on spelling, presentation or methodology.

while this year is definitely an aberration, the median points and amount of maximum points awarded has been going up steadily over the years. I am wondering if there a better way to facilitate inter-annual variability.

Also, this year will have knock on effects in the subsequent years

I think everyone knows the LC is a ridiculous out-of-date system that should be scrapped. It has only survived this long because of the cosey cartel of teacher unions, grind schools, Universities, and the Dept. of Education. But is no longer serves its purposes

It is 2021, not 1951. What to replace it with is a hard one, but surely some other countries have got the balance right between project work, continuous assessments, interviews, and exams.

The leaving cert is grand for some, not grand for others. The issue really is what we have people doing after the leaving cert.

College courses to beat the band but a hell of a lot of them completely nonsensical and/or irrelevant. Granted college is needed for some careers but we really should be going down the route of more apprenticeships/traineeships/shorter courses.

A college degree is like a pair of trousers. Nobody notices that you are wearing trousers. But they notice if you don’t have trousers on.

While my point sounds facetious, College is about far more than just the subject that is being taught. It teaches life skills (like managing assignments, deadlines, attending lectures), gives people confidence, the skills to question what they read (arguably a critical skill in the era of misinformation) and to grow as people. I grew immeasurably from when I entered as a teenager to finishing up as an adult. A university is a safe space where you can practice being an adult without the harshness of the real working world.

Aptitude is something really difficult to define and much harder to quantify. I would call consistency, kindness, patience, communication skills, ability to stay calm in a crisis as good aptitude for a doctor. Does knowing what shape follows next in a series really make a better doctor? Sure, it will help with pattern recognition. But if a doctor cannot speak to a patient and elicit the information, such knowledge is redundant. The number one cause of complaint to the medical council is due to issues with communication. The HPAT doesn’t actually test for this? In fact, the HPAT is taught by a mathematician who has never met a patient in his life.

Aptitude may be clearly definable in the context of the art portfolio, but it is so hard to define in other contexts. There is no simple solution.

Studies have shown that aptitude tests do not correlate with a person’s performance in that degree. A person can watch ER or Scrubs and think that hey, I do well in college, I want to do medicine. But the true aptitude test is when they roam the wards on their first day as an intern. Similarly, I loved Legally Blonde. But the true test for law is when you have your first client in front of you and you have to manage the situation. Doing the job is a real-world setting is the only true aptitude test

I don’t agree with calling a course Mickie Mouse. While it may not be the most practical, it doesn’t mean that it is not worthy.

Also, if IT degrees in this country were so easy, I don’t understand why the attrition rate is so high?

About 56% of people aged between 15-39 have a third-level qualification according to the CSO (2016). That means 44% of people don’t have a third-level qualification. This notion that everybody has a third-level qualification is untrue

Applied Maths doesn't have part c's. And having done likewise in going back to 80s questions while studying it, I don't agree there is a noticeable difference in the standard.

The SEC does something similar, albeit with less transparency. At the markers' conferences, they adjust the marking schemes on the basis of the results of a subset of scripts.

Are saying that those without a college degree don't gain those life skills and potentially those that don't attend college don't every really "grow up" - cannot question something for themselves?

I totally disagree with your analogy to be honest. I've worked with many fine people who've never been near a college or have never reached the heady heights of gaining a college degree - would never have noticed.

I suppose a lot of these opinions come from where you are and have been yourself. All I can see is the amount of very poor courses out there setting very poor expectations for those that do them.

Read my previous comments and you will see the percentages of students at each point score over the years