Investigation into leaving cert and university results.

[stringjack]

As the representitive organisation of the teaching body, a body that has seen overseen a FIVE HUNDRED PERCENT rise in strieght 'A's, how is it odd to identify them as posibly being to blame? Has the TUI signalled past concern at this hyper inflation of educational results? The results, miraculous as they are, of their teaching or their marking? Please point to a concerted campaign by teachers to address this frankly startling rise, or explain it.

I would add that our childrens education is time and again put forward by the TUI as the one thing we, the public who pay their wages, cannot afford to gamble or compromise on. Yet it seems those things have been gravely compromised, and it seems we have been paying handsomely for that privilage. There are no rocks for anyone to hide under here. Teachers are responsbile in large part for the education of children in this country. On that basis generous pay has become the norm in the profession. Too late for the TUI to wash its hands of some or part of the responsiblity.

We might also ponder the reality that said low quality graduates are the future teachers.

...

Blanket memorisation has been the norm since my day. We have to keep in mind the dramatic rise in streight 'A's. Not only that but the gravity of the situation. For lack of natural resources and a tradition of heavy industry, education has been tauted for decades as one of our most attractive assets for foreign investors.

It is the case now that a major multi-national which is an important part of our economy, is red flagging the falling standards of Irish graduates. So it is not a historical problem, but one that seems to have come into the light in the past 15 to 20 years - and is ongoing. It is not a question of secondary teachers and university lecturers doing a better job. Patently they are not, because this issue has been raised by a percieved and recognised decline in standards. There is no getting around that. If students were memorising better or the staff adapting to the curriculim better, there would be no decline in the standard of our graduates. There is a fundemental mis-match here. How can we have higher grades, dramatically higher grades, yet lower quality students? The issue here is our education system is failing and more worrying is that system itself is producing dramatically opposite indicators to the contrary. It defys logic.

This cannot be gotten around. Companies need highly qualified graduates suitable for the task to which they are employed. We need said graduates to fuel the only plan we have to get ourselves out of the current and impending economic decline. So this goes to the heart of our national interests. No amount of bullsh*tting or a whitewash is going to make this go away. This is going to effect our economy at a crucial time. No cosy deal between the TUI and Dept. of Education is going to placate those who will nto invest further in ireland because such a deal will not deliever what they are being promised.

Couple falling standards of graduates whose qualifications are not fit for purpose with some of the highest salery cost bases in the EU - any government that could sell that to foreign companies wanting to set up here would get my vote because they would be nothing short of miracle makers.

Ah. I see what I did. I assumed that the topic of this thread was grade inflation. I see now that the topic of the thread is why-teachers-are-lazy-parasites. Carry on.

[Drico]

Whatever about University results, where I most definatley see the issue, why does the Leaving being easier or harder make any real difference when the point is to differentiate between students?

[wombat]

...
I assumed that the topic of this thread was grade inflation. I see now that the topic of the thread is why-teachers-are-lazy-parasites. .

It is and if you're that sensitive, you need a change in occupation.

[macdarawhitfield]

Neither it seems on current evidance are those who are paid to do so.

Pull-ease! Spellcheck should help you to avoid the necessity for some crap teacher to 'dumb up' your posts.Unless you are drunk;in which case fair play to you.

[Mitsui2]

Basically, BS is preferable to BO

You know, if you look at that statement in a certain light, it could almost serve as the motto of modern Ireland - at least during the Celtic Tiger years.

[Disabled student]

I know one University student who got 510 points in the LC but he failed in passing 2nd year while at the same time, other student with 350 points in the LC passed in University 2nd year. Both were on the same degree course. The lecturers have commented on memorization during the 1st years and emphasized on understanding of the topic.

[Delarivier]

Students arriving at university these days display appalling spelling and grammar, to the extent that it is so widespread that lecturers do not really mark down students for it in the manner they would have in the past.

The reason their spelling and grammar is so bad is a combination of three factors:

1) the internet and the capacity to 'cut and paste'
2) students at LC level write an essay for their teacher, which the teacher corrects and the student then learns by heart
3) student regurgitates essay in some capacity in exam

Plagiarism is also an enormous problem in universities today, which gets worse with each new cohort of the internet generation, but few institutions do much to address the problem or take it seriously.

This is one aspect of the problem. I teach at third level and am frequently amazed at the spectacular inability of students to produce a coherent project report that is not full of errors. In the last 10 years I've seen two - only two! - final year B.Sc project drafts that were well written.

Another problem is the advent of modularisation. Courses are split up into modules, which are examined independently. The content of these is sometimes quite arbitrary and topics are stuck together to ensure that they are covered. There is no requirement for students to integrate information across modules, and they do not see the connections. Combine this with a requirement for continuous assessment - 50% and more of the total grade - and you have a recipe for artificially inflated grades. It may work well enough in the arts, but not in professional courses. Try training a doctor or a vet who does not appreciate the connections between body systems because they were taught in different modules!

[riven]

All very good points but the biggest problem is often the limited indepednence of results from ITs and maybe unis (dont know about them).

In an exam for ITs it is the lecturer who marks the paper. The is scope for external examiners checking a limited number of papers. However considering the social structures of third level institutions and repetition of these external examiners, the clear waters of external verification become muddied.

There is no incentive for a lecturer in an IT to upgrade the course as dictated by advances in his/her field. This is mainly because there is little incentive for that person to upgrade their own knowledge in the area. In IT a lecturer is not required to do research. Thus courses often stagnate. I remember receiving notes of several lectures that where more than 10 years old.
However in a uni where the research requirement is present, often it is so far ahead of the students or so far removed from the students that this cannot be applied to teaching. I have always mandated a better balance between research and teaching whereby those doing very advanced research can give guest or advanced modules with those choosing for a smaller research burden can establish the core principles.

Grade inflation thus serves to cover the asses of those who mark (and thus teach). However this misses the real point. Grade inflation is brought about by a stagnation of the mind on the part of the institution, not the students. The process by which these institutions' serve' (your having a laugh) the students (an institutions main resource in this country) needs to be reexamined.

[Thac0man]

Grade inflation thus serves to cover the asses of those who mark (and thus teach). However this misses the real point. Grade inflation is brought about by a stagnation of the mind on the part of the institution, not the students. The process by which these institutions' serve' (your having a laugh) the students (an institutions main resource in this country) needs to be reexamined.

Very true. We should bare in mind the comparison most associated in the media with what is going on in Ireland is the comparable situation in the UK. I have heard on Newstalk a commentator claim, rightly, that the UK governments investigation into grade inflation proved exams were not getting easier. Now sorry to be a stick in the mud, but a government investigating into its own alledged wrong doing is for a start nonsense. Fundamentally it also sets the criteria for finding of wrong doing or error. So again we are back to square one whitewash country.

At the end of the day if the Fainna Fail government had achieved a five fold increase in streight 'A's - and bare in mind according to some posters here it is "not the teachers fault", they would have erected statues of Mary Hanifan across the nation and still be trumpeting it as an unparralleled achievement, which apparently is it.

Yet this dramatic increase seems not even to attract politicians to inflate their own grades? No minister of education that has been propelled to an equally high ministry for a repeat proformance has delivered what can only be described as transformational. At the very least said politicians have not been able to proform simular miracles after their tenure as Minister for Education. The only non FF minister to hold the position since 1992 was Niamh Bhreathnach.

There is a question mark over whether or not the weakening of degree graduates qualifications and the LC are connected. The evidence that they are connected is for now only anecdotal. But we should remind ourselves again that it is industry that is highlighting this apparent failure. Actually thats to light, it is not an apparent failure, it is a very real one. Is the government really going to tell Intel they are wrong?

[birthday]

It was interesting to see John White from the ASTI pre-judge the investigation by saying that there had been no grade inflation at secondary level that could not be accounted for by either students working harder, improved teaching or the common availability of marking systems.

The idea that we will get anything other than a fudge is confirmed by the fact that it is the DES itself that is carrying out the investigation!