Advisory committee:Orals / Practicals Will take place Easter hols

It appears from that circular that the primary reason for moving the exams to the Easter break is to appease principals who don’t like to release teachers to examine during term time.

It explicitly states that the exams will not encroach on principals’ holidays because an ‘exams aide’ will be appointed to look after the running of things.

I’ve examined orals for years. I don’t do it for the extra few quid. I do it for two reasons. The first is the insight I get into schools other than my own – meeting management, staff, students, etc. It’s mad but you really get a feel for a school when drive up to it on a Monday morning and spend a week there. My second reason is the break I get from my own school. I tend to come back invigorated with new ideas from great schools or an appreciation for how my own place isn’t that bad after all.

This new arrangement however eliminates my two main reasons for doing it. Empty schools, empty staff-rooms, it looks like it’ll be a soulless experience like the recording of orals last year. Traditionally, examining takes five days. Under this new arrangement, it will take six, which includes a weekend and four days of the Easter holidays. You finish teaching on the Friday and are examining on the Saturday. Eleven working days in a row, it'll be fairly intense.

It says in the circular that I’ll be automatically appointed, but I’ve no doubt at this point that I’ll be declining the offer. The majority of my fellow examiners tend to be of middle-age, well experienced and probably doing it for reasons similar to mine. I may be wrong, but I just can’t see them signing up for this arrangement.

The only way there won’t be a recruitment crisis here is if there is a huge amount of teachers who really want to do it but who in the past have not been allowed to by their principals. Even if that is the case, will they still want to do it under this new arrangement?

When I heard this initially I assumed that the Orals would have the same arrangement as last year. But I would imagine that, for reasons stated by another poster, that some regular examiners will be put off by the new arrangements. However, a lot of mad stuff is gotten away with in teaching because there are always people - young relatively desperate teachers - who'll say "how high?" when asked to jump. I wouldn't rule out lots of new recruits taking up the option if needed with an eye on the CV and all the "leadership" they'll be able to point to.

All that said, Easter is a long way away yet - I wouldn't say this scenario is set in stone either. We had 987 Covid cases on this date last year, and far less people in hospital than we have today. By 6th January cases were over 7k per day, a figure we are essentially at right now. Things could change dramatically. I think it's no coincidence that these arrangements were announced as schools were breaking up. It's likely they know what the scenario will be in the new year and want to create the illusion they are controlling the narrative.

But, what if you don't want to attend during the holidays? The fact that you follow up that question with "obviously I'm being facetious" says it all with regard to the way teachers are treated in this country. We are even afraid to admit on an anonymous message board that we enjoy our holidays.

Of course you wouldn't want to work during your holidays. Who would? Jesus Christ, we deserve every minute of them.

This is absolutely mental and to be honest, we need to fight back on this. The department is pushing back their recruiting issue on us. It's not our problem they can't find the numbers to examine. What happens when they have the same trouble finding superintendents in June and correctors in July?

It’s €25 ish per student. And a fee of €200 or so for doing it this year

I used to do it before it went out of school time and came out with about €1000 for the week.

At 5 days, we used to get 80-100 candidates. I presume it will be more over 6 days.

I would normally aim to do 3 per hour and have 18 candidates per day. That would have left me with Friday afternoon for the paperwork and I’d have all in the post that evening.

there’s a day for the conference at some stage before the orals too.

Not the case in our school. Our school normally has a policy of only allowing 1 teacher out per year. This year there will be 3 of us doing it.

I enjoy doing the orals, and with our school’s policy I only get a chance to do it every 4 years normally.

Because this year it’s during the holidays.

"As an aside, not one of the Irish or MFL teachers I've spoken to has any intention of examining orals this year, these are people that would generally do it every year or every other year. Who will do it?"

This would seem to be an accurate reflection of the reality if the circular just given to all teachers today from the Dept requesting oral examiners for languages is an indicator:

"Dear Principal,

Please note that point 4 below should be brought to the immediate attention of candidates.

At this time there a number of very important issues to bring to your attention regarding the Leaving Certificate Oral and Music and Junior Cycle Home Economics practical examinations. xz

1. Examiner Shortage in Irish, German, French and Spanish 

We have issued a number of communications over the past number of weeks pointing out that the involvement of teachers in undertaking the role of Examiner is critical to the successful running of the examinations system.

Despite the efforts made to date, we continue have a shortfall of examiners in the four main subjects; Irish, French, German and Spanish  and are seeking additional applications from language examiners for these subjects immediately.  With Covid 19 rates so high at the moment I am sure that you share our concern about ensuring that we have capacity in all subjects to provide examiners for all candidates in all schools and for expected attrition. We urgently need to bring these numbers up in order that we can conduct all of the examinations over the period Saturday 9 to Thursday 14 April as scheduled.

The SEC is again seeking the assistance and support of the second-level school system in ensuring that we will have sufficient examiners to conduct all examination activities.  In your school leadership role, we would ask you to consider the contribution being made by your school to the collective efforts to ensure that these examinations can proceed as scheduled over the Easter period.

Applications forms and details of the increased rates which apply this year are available from our website here https://www.examinations.ie/recruitment/

In the event that we do not reach the required number of examiners we need to alert you that it may be necessary to put in place contingency arrangements. In this regard, I can advise as follows;

·   That it may not be possible to provide for the delivery of all subjects in all schools in the period 9 to 14 April

·   That it may be necessary to schedule some tests on the contingency days of Friday 7 and Thursday 8 April

·   That as a result, some teachers signed up for examining work will need to be out of school for these two days

·   That if it is not possible to provide for all tests on the 7 and 8 April then the tests will be rescheduled to the window for the late Orals commencing on Wednesday 4 May

·   That any reschedule of tests to the late Orals window will require teachers undertaking roles as Oral examiners to be out of school for possibly 5 days in May to cover these duties.

Should this become necessary the SEC will endeavour to notify affected schools no later than Monday 4 April noting that such arrangements can become necessary at short notice. No doubt there will be disappointment for schools and candidates should it be necessary to either bring forward or delay their examinations as set out above. However, if we can increase the examiner number to acceptable levels then this need for these contingency arrangements will dissipate."

All other examinations are marked during the holidays. I can see the case for music, but I don’t understand why people would expect time off work to examine anything else.

I see grading our own students and having oral exams in Easter as two very separate issues. I'm talking only about oral exams in Easter holidays here.

As someone who has given up almost every July of my career to marking exams, I struggle to see what the issue is for orals.

Anyone who does superintendent also gives up June, the exam candidates have always given up June. I don't see this as any different.

The issue for Orals is very simple. They have always been done during the school year. There's no obvious need to change that. It was a system which worked fine.

Comparison with marking exams in July is not valid. Oral exams are marked in summer too. Not sure what that comparison is about. When are exams supposed to be marked?

It worked fine for students who had whatever support from teachers, fellow students etc which was available in the school on the day. They were out of class for half an hour and that was the outside of it. Their much-needed break and/or study time over Easter was not eaten up.

They also got to do different oral exam in different weeks. Some schools will struggle to avoid students gave two oral exams on successive days or even maybe on the same day, which is ironic in a week when changes to the LC were announced with a view to reducing pressure on students.

It worked fine for examiners too in that at least they got to experience some kind of normal school life in another school rather than a ghost-town where despite nobody being around they have to still stick rigidly to school hours. And yes they had to be covered in their school but it was not out of the school's regular substitution allocation. And to anticipate the 'they can't get Irish teachers' thing, students get plenty of free classes for all sorts of frivolous reasons.

It worked fine for the SEC as they were able to recruit enough examiners and could be confident of more or less full student attendance which they will not have this year.

They system worked fine for everyone.

Your sole argument against it seems to be that you didn't get to do them which, with respect, is a weak argument to change a national system that worked perfectly well.

The cost to the SEC is not part of any argument I make. You asked who did the system work fine for and I answered.

The "loss of teaching and learning" is a specious weak argument and nearly always is from whatever source. There's far more disruption to the average school through sports and other activities, and poor attendance. The Orals were on for two weeks but there was no loss of a "fortnight's teaching and learning". An individual student would be out of class for about half an hour to wait and do the Oral. Hardly a game-changer. The disruption to academic plans for Easter study is far more significant for those who are interested in doing it.

If teachers had foresight they would make sure this was the case everywhere......

It was 600 yesterday. I’m surprised it’s not more. Each examiner that falls to covid is 80 odd candidates added to the list.

I’m exhausted too. I don’t think working over the weekend works well. So much pressure leading up to the holidays, and then straight into it Saturday morning.

I would find it pressured in school time too though. We would be expected to have work left for the week. And I haven’t done it since the era of teams, so I don’t know would that increase the pressure for school work while out examining.

This may be out of turn, and I realise that teaching has become a lot less enjoyable in the Covid years.

But these students have been denied so much school time. Nobody has mentioned what is best for the student. This gives then more class time in advance of the orals.

And as for the impact on holiday time? Life has become more difficult for everyone, you’re not exactly stuck for holiday entitlement.

Most teachers will be planning on focusing on the written exam now, not the orals. Now teachers, and students need to focus on both, they now have 100% assessment for these subjects hanging over them until the end. The exact opposite of the thinking Norma Foley and the Dept recently used to announce her LC reforms. I'd argue that teachers are much more aware of this fact, and thinking more of the students than the supposed decision makers are.

Let alone the fact that LC student attendance starts getting sporadic in many schools from here on out. Disaster.

Had numerous students just not show at their scheduled time, turn up late, etc. Left the examiners being quite disgruntled with the timetabling. They are used to having the students in school and at their disposal. Left me scrambling to try get them in a reschedule them.

An examiner told me that all students should be on site for the whole day of their oral. That’s what I was dealing with.

Whole thing left a bad taste to be honest.

It was a difficult experience. I had to do 23 students a few days in a row to facilitate a school in avoiding clashes with other oral and practical exams. As a consequence I had to work through break and lunch. Exam aide seemed unaware of this and the idea of being asked if I wanted a cup of tea etc. was not thought of. Didn't help that despite the school being like a ghost-town the room I was using was as far away from the exam aide as possible so if there was any issue or student not there it took an age to locate the exam aide. Nice lady but was just a little unaware that all the natural support systems that are there for an examiner during the school day, e. g. students by and large on-site and findable since they are timetabled, and people around to locate them, were gone.

Someone here recently assumed when I mentioned school time being better for the examiner was a desire to "see how things were done" elsewhere. Couldn't care less about that. It was a practical issue borne out by the actual experience.

In the end when students were not around I just carried on. As I said to the exam aide, if they don't show in June it'll be tough luck.

Unfortunately I don't think the impact on students (or anyone else will be considered). School is an environment with a short memory. That group of students will have concerns other than letting the SEC know how it was for them.

Must say I've never found noise an issue down the years. Then again I suppose you just make sure there's a suitable room for the job.

Exam aide was fine for me, didn't need a Principal and Deputy Principal in site. Never had a student in over 10 years who wasn't courteous either. Some of the points you measure as a success wouldn't occur to me to be honest.