– Life along the Slaney

The Leaving Cert begins this morning for 256 students in Gorey Community School but will their results really matter in the long run.

In recent weeks, months and years there have been rumblings about the way students are tested in this country with rote learning being derided as a thing of the past and calls for some sort of continuous assessment needing to take place.

Figures compiled by officials in the State Examinations Commission for the Department of Education have indicated there has been serious grade inflation in Leaving Cert results with the number of students achieving the higher grades (A1, A2 and B1) almost doubling since 1992.

Is it that the country has become that much smarter? Are we now a nation of super-geniuses who will conquer the world? Apparently not. According to industry experts and analysts the Irish student population is completely unequipped to handle the real world and as a result companies – in particular high tech companies – are looking outside of Ireland to fill vacancies.

Ireland prided itself on a highly educated workforce and the Government trotted out all these figures during the last decade about literacy rates and the increasing number of people finishing their Leaving Certificate.

Then there was the explosion of people attending the hallowed turf of third level education. Once free fees were introduced in the 1990s, the percentage of people continuing to third level increased exponentially. Everything was rosy according to those in charge. We had one of the highest number of university graduates in Europe and would attract some of the world’s leading companies to Ireland as a result.

And they came – though not to Gorey it should be said – from Google and Dell to eBay and Facebook, all these worldwide technology companies established bases here due to the perceived standard of education and the fact that Ireland was the “gateway to Europe.”

The island of Saints and Scholars was once again the leading destination for those looking for the best and brightest.

However in recent times the Googles and others have begun to bemoan the lack of qualified young people in this country. They cannot fill positions in certain areas because the universities and colleges in Ireland are not producing them.

So what happened? How have we fallen so quickly from our once lofty position as the brain box of Europe?

The answer lies in our education system which hasn’t really changed in decades. From the moment you enter the second level system you are focused on seven or eight days that will change your life.

I was told that I will never sit a harder or more important exam than the Leaving Cert. Everything we did was geared towards passing this exam. However if you asked me to relay some knowledge learned for that exam back to you a month or two after it, I would have struggled.

The lack of continuous assessment in the Leaving Cert curriculum means that all your eggs are in one basket.

The Leaving Cert Applied and even the Transition Year Programme have in more recent times attempted to give students a more practical approach to life after the Leaving, but it is far too little.

When these students enter third level they have to be reprogrammed to think and learn for themselves. There is very little in the way of joined-up thinking in the education system in this country and as a result we are producing young people who have over 15 years of education but very little idea of what it takes to get on in the real world.

What big companies want are young graduates with real world experience and who can contribute to their company from the off.

To get to this stage there needs to be a serious overhaul of the education system in Ireland if the 320 first year students coming into Gorey Community School in September are to have a chance.