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HEAVY WORKLOADS AND a focus on rote learning are just some of the reasons why students, parents and teachers believe it is time to reform the current Leaving Cert cycle, according to a new study.
Research from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) found there was a consensus among Leaving Cert students on the need for a greater variety of assessment methods, including practical and project work.
The study carried out in 41 schools by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment recorded what participants – students, parents and teachers – believe are the positive and negative aspects of the current senior cycle programme and how they believe current challenges could be addressed.
The majority of respondents were in favour of an overhaul of the current senior cycle, which incorporates transition year, fifth year and sixth year, to include spreading assessment out throughout the three years and using a wider variety of methods to assess student performance.
Participants felt that such reforms would help to address current challenges, including a heavy workload and pressure to “cover the course”, which result in a focus on rote learning.
Researchers found that students surveyed were critical of the volume of work in many Leaving Cert subjects and of the concentration on assessment in an intensive period at the end of their sixth year.
“The high-stakes nature of the exam alongside the workload involved was seen as leading to a focus on ‘covering’ the course, leading to rote learning and feelings of stress and pressure rather than authentic understanding,” the study found.
This was echoed by a majority of parents who expressed concern about the impact of the high stakes, exam-based assessment on their children’s mental health, pointing to the volume of work involved and the focus on memorisation rather than “authentic understanding”.
Suggestions to counter this included exams taking place in fifth year as well as sixth year or more regular tests contributing to a final grade.
Others suggested ‘semesterisation’, whereby some subjects or modules within
subjects would be studied for a specific period during the senior cycle with assessment
taking place at the end of that period.
One student said:
If the Leaving Cert thing was divided into two different exams. At the end of fifth year, you and go do, say, your exams for three of those subjects, and then at sixth year, you only study another three subjects, and at the end of sixth year, you do an exam on those three subjects. Now, that gives space for more practical [subjects], … life skills, and things like that.
On semesterisation, another student said:
Imagine if you could do that for all of the subjects, you could do half of it, done, and then the pressure, the immense pressure, would be taken off you straight away for next year. … And you’d be able to concentrate more and do better.
Listening to young people
Findings from the case-study schools also indicated that senior cycle is not seen as fully inclusive of those who are less academically oriented or those with special educational needs.
Many participants highlighted the view that the current senior cycle programme provides limited pathways to success for students with a more practical orientation. It was also noted that pathways for students with special educational needs could be improved.
Emer Smyth, one of the authors of the report, said this exercise has shown the value of listening to young people on issues that affect their lives.
“Young people provide a clear vision of the kinds of learning that would help develop them to their potential and prepare them for the changing world ahead of them. Their views should be taken into account in any changes to senior cycle.”
Many teachers and several parents felt that the new junior cycle had been introduced without consultation and were still unsure of the implications of these changes for student experiences and outcomes.
As a result, many teachers emphasised the need for any reform process to be gradual and consultative in nature and, along with many parents, cautioned against devaluing the strong currency of the Leaving Certificate. Resources, particularly continuous professional development, were seen as crucial in any change process.
John Hammond, CEO of the NCCA, said: “It’s at classroom and school level that changes in learning actually happen so it made sense for schools to be a major source of ideas and feedback in the senior cycle review.
“Their work, alongside the recently concluded final phase of consultation, which included 10 rounds of focus group meetings, 18 bilateral meetings, a national forum attended by 153 participants, and 4,300 responses to the NCCA’s online survey, provides us with a great basis upon which the review can now be progressed.”
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So Covid 19 not a major societal killer. The lockdowns were basically imposed for our health service to cope with the lack of acute intensive care beds in the health system (lowest per capita in Europe). Full Stop.
@Paul Tennant: No, it does not say that.
@Paul Tennant: you need to learn to read mate
@NJ: Full stop followed by an actual full stop is as redundant a sentence is as your interpretation of the data.
@Paul Tennant: He said ‘full stop’ though. He must be far more intelligent than the rest of his gibberish made it seem
@Paul Tennant: Sweden had the lowest number of ICU beds in Europe in March but they, unlike Ireland, have worked to increase capacity.
@NJ: can you not not clearly see the graph at the top of the article? The excess deaths are no higher than the 2017-2018 year.
@Anna Anna: Hi Anna. You and others were advocating maybe over a month ago that we should base our restrictions on hospitalisations and deaths because Belgium were doing that.
Belgium, and Liege in particular, is now crippled with death and Covid-related misery to the point where their excellent healthcare system has been completely overwhelmed and they are begging for capacity from other nations.
Would you like to admit that would’ve been a poor strategy, in hindsight? If Belgium’s capacity can be overwhelmed so quickly, what about Ireland’s terrible capacity?
@Anna Anna: Just to emphasise in case there’s any confusion.
Belgium’s 7-day average ICU admissions = 68.
Belgium’s 7-day average Covid deaths = 122.
Their ‘wait until it’s too late’ strategy is the one you were praising not too long before things completely fell apart.
@Paul Tennant: https://www.hiqa.ie/reports-and-publications/health-technology-assessment/analysis-excess-all-cause-mortality-ireland
2020 report from hiqa showing broadly the same numbers but 3 months earlier
@▪️: No – she won’t. Nobody here would admit to that. The Journal comments section is packed with armchair experts that know better than the actual experts.
@Brendan Cooney: but that’s the truth of it, get out your fact checker. Another truth is that 60% of the people who contracted Covid in Ireland had the Spanish strain of the virus. It’s amazing that there is no proper structures in place for mandatory Covid testing and screening at airports in this Country.
@▪️: I have always advocated a Swedish approach. I’d like to see you make the same comparisons
@Anna Anna: No, Anna. You haven’t. I remember you posting links to the Belgian approach telling us all how much more sense it made compared to our approach.
Would you like me to go back and find your comments and link them? More than happy to.
@JusticeForJoe: thanks
@▪️: forget about it, she’s never wrong. I flagged the same last week. It was the end of September when Belgium actually relaxed some of the measures and she was branding this as the model Ireland should follow. Sweden’s approach has been proven by multiple experts as being a disaster during the 1st wave and it is very likely that the 2nd wave is not going be any better, since they now have more daily cases per 100,000 than us with an exponential growth in the last month or so.
@▪️: do those stats not suit your narrative ‘Malachi’? I have always advocated a Swedish approach but you do not want to highlight their hospital figures as they are doing very well despite a rise in cases. I also agreed with the Belgian change of Covid policy to move the focus away from solely case numbers and look to the hospital admissions as an indicator when lifting/implementing restrictions. I’m not denying that. What is your agenda though Black Square/Malachi?
@Anna Anna: are you going to continue to avoid his question or are you going to await the daily instant gratification you get from posting the figures from the Covid app while simultaneously attempting to discredit the Irish approach at all opportunities.
@filthypete: ah yes, the old interpretation of data (“Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is interesting. But what they hide is vital.”)
So deaths caused directly from Covid are between 800-1000 lower than what’s recorded.
@Paul Tennant: what’s worse, circa 1000 nursing home deaths never got a chance to go to ICU.
So what can we glean from this.
The mortality rate is artificially high not including “died with/from covid” fiasco but the lockdowns are vastly disproportionate to the cause.
Enquiry starts here.
And our peak is not much worse than our peak flu season in 14/15 and 15/16
@John Egan: 27% of statistics are false!
@John Egan: *16/17. Stats don’t lie.
@Anna Anna: I know you’re feeling a wee bit tetchy because you backed the wrong horse at the end of September and it went t*ts up. Belgium is one of the worst places in the world for Covid right now and you wanted us to do things more like they did.
Here’s us arguing about it in late September, just before cases and deaths surged in the country:
https://www.thejournal.ie/france-cases-coronavirus-5214207-Sep2020/
As for Sweden and their model? Well, their testing capacity was just overwhelmed in Stockholm. We’ll see if hospitalisations and deaths follow, but if the Belgian catastrophe is anything to go by, I’ll stick with the proactive Irish position that led us to one of the lowest death rates in the EU right now.
@Vladimir Macro: look up wo2020060606 patentscope (being momentarily updated) for last while then start joining the dots.
@Paul Tennant: Ah that was the 20A.EU1 strain that was detected in Spanish farm workers in late June and found to spread throughout Europe since and that 60% of the current infections that have been sequenced are shown to be related to this. The first case was found in Ireland on 23rd July and in total all Irish cases seem to be related to one of five cases imported directly or indirectly through the UK or Northern Ireland.
What this shows is that individuals did not self isolate upon return or returned via Northern Ireland. The UK rate is about 90% so any case that came from the UK or NI is likely to be this strain. Screening at airports, ports and cross border traffic would be needed and even then the current screening and even the PCR tests only show developed infections which is why close contacts are to siolate for 14 days and tested twice. So even screening at the airports would not have detected recent infections or developing infections
So it is not true to say that ” 60% of the people who contracted Covid in Ireland had the Spanish strain of the virus” unqualified. What is true is that currently 60% of the 56 viruses sequenced are should to relate to this variant and technically it is 51%^ and not 60%. As this strain was first detected on the 20th June and first time in Ireland on the 23rd July it was not involved in any cases prior to that.
Also the document makes it clear that there is no evidence of direct or otherwise transmission into Ireland
“The earliest sequences identified date from the 20th of
June, when 7 Spanish sequences and 1 Dutch sequence
were sampled. The next non-Spanish sequence was from
the UK (England) on the 18th July, with a Swiss sequence
sampled on the 22nd and an Irish sampled on
the 23rd.”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.25.20219063v1.full.pdf
@Anna Anna: Fact checked by the journal 30th Sept 2020
Funding has enabled the HSE to put in place 55 permanent and fully-staffed beds during the pandemic, increasing capacity by 25% since before March and bringing the current number to 280.
Pre-Covid capacity: 225
Temporary surge capacity: 354
Current permanent capacity: 280
Capacity after Winter Plan funding: 297
https://www.thejournal.ie/icu-bed-numbers-5217685-Sep2020/
Also if interest might be the other EU countries with less ICU beds than us
Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Portugal, Sweden, New Zealand and the Netherlands – although getting current stats can be hard as ICU beds can increase (NI was at 98 and now at 120 ICU beds – just as we were at 500 at the height of the crises with HSE Report 13th April Total Critical Care Beds 500 – Open & Staffed 415).
Also the normal ICU bed count does not include those available in private hospitals which changes the ratio of beds to people when considered. And one last point. The ICU bed count does not include the 28 pediatric ICU bed could which seems to be included in other countries stats.~
I cannot understand why people in Ireland insist on thinking we are always the worst. Must we be a country of knockers without even fact checking?
@Anna Anna: and with 2 months left in 2020 around 100 people less have lost their lives on Irish roads.
@Anna Anna: but Anna if Ireland has not been working to increase its capacity then what is this winter plan all about? Suggesting that the solution to containing a deadly virus and to saving lives is to have more beds is ludicrous. If you need more and more beds then that’s a sure sign that, just like Sweden, you are losing the battle.
https://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-hse-winter-flu-plan-5213655-Sep2020/?amp=1/
@Anna Anna: The Swedish approach: new measures introduced
Refrain from visits to indoor environments such as shops, shopping centres, museums, libraries, swimming pools and gyms.
Necessary visits to grocery stores and pharmacies are allowed.
Refrain from participating in gatherings such as meetings, concerts, performances, sports training, matches and competitions.
However, this does not apply to sports training for children and young people born in 2005 or later.
If possible, physical contact with people other than those with whom you live should be avoided.
This means, among other things, to refrain from arranging or attending parties and similar social gatherings.
This in on top of the existing reduction in public transport capacity, the work from home advice, seated only service in cafes and bars were social distancing is possible, masks at airports, and, lastly, the Swedish government say “there may be situations where it is difficult to avoid congestion and close contact for a long time. There, mouth guards can be of value.”
Even with all these recommendations and less testing than Ireland they have 5301 new cases and 14 deaths today as per https://www.covid19insweden.com/en/
@Gavin Conran: sorry, just pause a second, take a breath and look at the graph.
Do you see a spike in deaths in the month of April? That is due to covid. Now look at the rest of the year.
Do you see that the deaths are more or less in line across all years?
This clearly shows that we struggled with covid in April but since then it has had little impact.
Some of that is to do with lockdowns and health measures, people being more careful etc. But some is also to do with the fact that it isn’t the big killer they initially thought it was and also that treatment methods have improved.
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: they also don’t look at the fact that we have a young population. They compare to France, Spain and Italy the population’s of which are all a lot older than Ireland’s.
@Paul Tennant: are you only getting that now?
@Brendan Cooney: But that is a fact, so they might not be saying it, but it is the reality
@NJ: He can read all he likes, but he is stating the reality of the situation
@Paul Tennant: That’s what’s in your head, not what’s in the article.
@Joe: the same report, if people would just make the effort to read it, lists a burst of nursing home deaths in April, falling way off over the next 3 months. It is obvious that care homes need protection, something that the HSE and NPHET are still failing to do.
@Derdaly: ignoring to do so.
@Glenn Halpin: Yep she still posts it but its already in the main story.
She has an agenda but when pressed won’t answer, anyhoo she has been proved very wrong on many things, in fact the only thing she got correct are the ones she cut and pasted.
All to fulfil her narcissistic streak
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: New Zealand is in the EU speaking of knockers you might want to fact check that.
@GrumpyAulFella: In fairness our health service has being crying out for extra ICU capacity for the last 20 years successive government’s have failed to deliver this that is the reason our health service is at breaking point 24/7.
I see the Journal, or rather the media as a whole has stopped reporting on the ages of the deceased. It’s harder to keep the panic up when it’s clear that it’s mostly people in their mid 80s who are dying.
@Cultural Dissident: BUT FEAR IS THE MIND KILLER, Government media (sorry, I mean RTÉ) need to up their game, more fear and death rates.
@Cultural Dissident: the average age of death is higher than life expectancy.
@Cultural Dissident: in Peru nearly 40% of COVID-19 deaths are under 60 year, because their outbreak got out of control and hospitals collapsed. So middle aged people didn’t get brief or basic live saving medical care, just a day or two of oxygen.
The measures we undertook avoided that, so the few people that could not save were indeed elderly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Peru#Demographics
So that’s what really annoys me, people complain about a success, our hospitals coped and those who unfortunately did die were old and could not be saved.
@Cultural Dissident: There’s no conspiracy!
Look up : Epidemiology of Covid-19 daily Reports and 14 day Epidemiology of Covid-19 Reports which show ages of those hospitalised including ICU and deaths!
@Cultural Dissident: The death is low, but the fear of death is at an all-time high…
@Nuala Mc Namara: it definitely shows who had a positive PCR test. It doesn’t show who died or who’s in ICU because of Covid.
@Mills: If you look up: Coronavirus Daily Operations Updates-HSE you will see that the stats of CONFIRMED Covid-19 patients and SUSPECTED Covid-19 patients are separate stats eg
: yesterday there was 44 Confirmed Covid-19 cases in ICU and 12 Suspected Covid-19 cases in ICU.
: yesterday there was 322 Confirmed Covid-19 cases in hospitals and 121 Suspected Covid-19 cases in hospitals.
The stats on Epidemiology of Covid-19 daily reports re hospitals and ICU’s would be Confirmed Covid-19 cases.
@Nuala Mc Namara: indeed but a confirmed case could mean anything. You could be hospital or ICU for a multitude of reasons. Once you have a positive PCR test, you are now a covid patient, even if you are asymptomatic. Correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding is that a suspected case is when you are showing symptoms but either haven’t been tested or got a negative initially.
@Mills: my understanding is that everyone is tested on admission and until there’s a result you are treated as a suspected case.
So if I’m reading that right, there are no more people dying than there would be in a normal year? “Dying with” vs “dying from” brigade will be out again
@Alan Bury: no, the deaths were early in the year when we were not prepared. In Sept they were the same
@Alan Bury: You are not reading it correctly. There were around 1000 deaths more than would be expected. With all the extra precautions being taken now, hopefully there will not be another spike of excess deaths.
@Fionn Darland: he is reading it correctly. The excess deaths for 2019-2020 are no different from 2017-2018. This can clearly be seen from the graph.
@Anna Anna: 2016-2017 also about the same
@Anna Anna: “No different” apart from the large spike in the month of April, when Covid was killing people here, you mean?
Are you colourblind or just being deliberately disingenuous?
@▪️: and look at the spike in Jan for the years 2016-2017 and 2017-2018. 2019-2000 much lower than those two years for January. Focusing on April is a false comparison. Overall the spike has been no higher than previous years.
@▪️: big spike also in January 2018, neatly the same as April 2020. Excess deaths were below normal in May June and July, coming back to normal in August. The report is on the CSO website and should be viewed before anyone comments.
@Anna Anna: They have reverted to more normal levels because of all the risk mitigation measures we are taking such as level 5 in the plan. Spike in March and April shows what happens if virus is let go unchecked.
@Alan Bury: I find it amazing people are saying because there is not a huge difference .. it shows that covid isn’t as dangerous as we imagined… But comparing 2014-2020…. Without taking into consideration that we have been in some kind of lockdown for nearly 6/7 months now…. And still have similar or more deaths….. IS A SCARY THOUGHT! Imagine no lockdown??? I think those charts are scary and show how deadly the covid numbers could have been. Just look at Belgium now and USA for proof of what happens when you don’t lockdown.
@Anna Anna: It isn’t a false comparison. We avoided a spike in Jan 2020 because we had a relatively mild flu season compared to the years you’re talking about, then April with Covid came along and the mortality skyrocketed, wiping out the fatalities we avoided over winter in one go.
If April’s spike had been left unchecked, it would’ve put the flu season of 17-18 (which had no social distancing/restrictions to reduce it, remember) in Halpenny place. But it wasn’t left unchecked, was it?
@Brendan Cooney: get out of here will ya. Do you work for Dr.Tony or something?
@▪️: Do you really think Covid only arrived here in April?
@Anna Anna: Total deaths by year:
2017: 32,802
2018: 34,027
2019: 33,887
Three year average= 33,557
2020: (Jan-Sept) 25,959
2019 deaths (Oct-Dec) 9,087
Expected 2020 deaths using Oct-Dec 2019 data to complete the year : 35,046.
@Vladimir Macro: April was when the elderly hospital patients were transferred without tests (due to the test kit shortage) to the nursing homes. 1000+ deaths were nursing home patients
@Anna Anna: now let’s say we had no lock downs, and took no precautions what so ever, I wonder what the death count would look like.
@Vladimir Macro: Where did I say that? It obviously arrived earlier, but it takes time for the virus to make its way throughout the community and kill people. It’s not like an instant death ray. That’s not how viruses work…??
@DERRY1973: well Sweden were told they would have 85000 if they didn’t lockdown like the rest of Europe. They’ve had 5938 so far
@Anna Anna: 6 to 11 times the deaths per head of population than their Nordic neighbors.
Clearly from the March to September data it’s an estimated 400+ more deaths than usual.
If you look at January 2017 and 2018 the spike is the same as April this year. No panic back then?
@Ken Sullivan: true… But we had those scary high numbers…. With an unprecedented lockdown of the county… Isn’t that scary?
@Ken Sullivan: the spike was there, but was lower. In January 2017 there were 500 more deaths than average, in March 2020 there were 1000 more deaths than average.
I thought rip.ie was just used for planning burglaries. I was wrong.
@Humphrey De Fluff: No, that’s the Liverpool away fixtures…
So, not an exceptional year so far.
Certainly nowhere near the apocalyptic forecast of 120,000 deaths that precipitated the lockdown in March.
Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate if this qualifies as a pandemic at all, and if the path that the country is now on is the correct one.
@Garry Coll: 120,000 was the number estimated if we sat back and did nothing. We did do something. Hence…? Think about it Garry. Tell one of your brain cells to wake the other one up if you have too. You’ll get there eventually.
@Tommy Roche: even still it would never have been 120,000. The WHO estimates that over 500m people have been infected worldwide, with just over 1m deaths, so a death rate of 0.2%. This would have been 10,000 deaths if the entire island got infected at once.
Still a lot more, but not quite as many.
@Tommy Roche: Do you really believe that what we’ve done so far has saved 100,00 lives?
@Cultural Dissident:
If you were to believe such garbage it would be 118,000.
Why do they have to use such similar colours on the graph! Makes it very hard to read on phone
Why are we locked down? There is no pandemic for Gods sake
Not sure whether the lockdown worked so. Either it did and deaths would be way higher or it didn’t and the excess deaths were mainly in the nursing homes etc when the lockdown was too late for them. Or maybe it did. Confused….
@Sean Oige: I think April shows that the lockdown did work and if we hadn’t of done anything the excess deaths could have been a lot higher.
@Oisin: the report analyses deaths in HIQA registered nursing homes. There was obviously a spike in April. However the numbers in subsequent months for nursing homes are way below other years. There is no interpretation of the numbers and people should not speculate.
Eh, there was only a handful on covid related deaths in September – what were people expecting exactly? Hardly news…
All these people saying “not that many died… it’s just a flu… open the pubs… let’s be Sweden… I have muh rights!” History will correctly label you as a scourge.
@JusticeForJoe: Ha, history will tell what a mistake we all made in lockdown in the first place.
I’m amazed at how, even when presented with this easy to read graph, certain people still do not get it. The gap between normal and 2020 is bloody massive compared to the December and January spikes in other years.
Why on earth are they going off a website and not using the death register? My friend died in July but his family didn’t have it published on RIP so what they don’t exist then?
@Sommer Church: because you have up to 3 months to register a death in Ireland. The report covers this and also normalises some of the data against reported deaths for available periods.
Why are you using 2013 to 2017 is because excess death in 2018 and 2019 are much higher! Than previous year’s
@Joeohah: in fairness that’s because there is an asterix on the graph explaining that the 2018 and 2019 data in not final.
@Joe:
So someone who might have died in 2018 might not been reported yet!
11.9.20 the journal fact check!
Year 2020 2019 2018
January 2819 2982 3499
February 2537 2578 2859
March 2668 2663 3006
April 3225 2465 2613
May. 2203 2607 2405
Total 13,432 13,295 14380
Fair play to us .!
Am I the only one wondering.why the CSO has to rely on the rip.ie website to get their data? Can they not get better data from official sources?
@Claude Saulnier: Apparently it takes forever RIP does a good job to be fair.
6% approx increase in deaths is hardly an Apocalypse
Well this has escalated quickly. I’m off.
It’s right in front of us. April of this year was no worse than January of recent years. In addition, despite the fact that we were seeing many reported covid deaths into May, May is nothing exceptional in terms of excess mortality. I’m very interested to see what excess mortality for October will be.
The important month to look at is May. Between 300 and 400 covid deaths reported in May this year due to COVID (by date of death). Yet we see no significant increase in excess mortality for that month over previous years. Not even different to last year. How come?
have your say