Joe’s Jotter: Can Our Exam System be Fixed?

Joe's Jotter: The Problem With Our Exam System (And How We Fix It)

The debate is ongoing in relation to continuous assessment at Secondary school, with a keen focus currently on the percentage and type of allocation for any proposed changes. As you know, subjects at Junior Cycle now have Classroom Based Assessments (CBA’s) incorporated into them.

With a short Leaving Certificate review completed, changes have started taking place for our senior students from last September onwards. As with any new assessment model, we need to ensure that any new procedures are transparent and a sense of fairness is preserved.

What happened last September and what’s Upcoming?

In September 2025, the incoming 5th Years studying Business, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Arabic, Latin, or Ancient Greek (Tranche 1) started the process of completing an additional assessment component (AAC) that will make up 40% of their final Leaving Cert mark in these subjects.

In general, this AAC will involve developing a defined project, with 60% of the marks for these subjects being allocated via the written exam at the end of 6th Year. Tranche 2 (September 2026), 3 and 4, containing baskets of the other subjects will follow on for 5th Year students in subsequent years, until all subjects have eventually been phased in.

Preserving Fairness.

With the above in mind, firstly I feel that any continuous assessment introduced needs to be completed during school time. If students take work home, it may become an unfair competition depending on the socio-economic background of their parents and other extrinsic factors. i.e. I feel we can’t take the chance of having any external interference in projects or tasks that students are required to complete alone.

We need to make sure a level playing field is retained for all students and that we don’t allow potential changes to tarnish or unbalance our mainly solid exam system.

Should Teachers assess the AAC’s of their own Students?

I strongly feel that projects and practical’s should not be corrected by the student’s own teacher. The department needs to hire suitably qualified personnel for these posts. They also need to properly resource schools for these assessments and allocate proper time on the timetable for students and teachers to prepare for them.

Teachers are clear that they don’t want to assess their own pupils. A teacher correcting their pupils’ work for any kind of state certification would leave our existing robust system open to all kinds of accusations. When I read articles from around the world and hear of exam papers being leaked and scandals over corruption in education, it’s clear to me that our exam system here in Ireland actually works pretty well. 

People need to be careful what they wish for. ‘The law of unintended consequences’ and ‘baby and bath water’ come to mind here. The SEC and our Department of Education and Skills have a great track record of always acting professionally and with the utmost integrity when it comes to the exam process. These principles need to be maintained at all costs.

Are Parents in favour of Teachers Correcting?

According to a January 2019 report from the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD) entitled ‘Senior Cycle Reform – What do we want?’, the responses are varied in relation to the question of exam assessment.

For example, only 22% of principals, deputy principals and teachers support the practice of correcting their own students’ work, with many having concerns that a teacher would be biased against or for a student. That number increases to 30% of parents who would support such a change, with a slight majority of 51% of students wanting it. Not major numbers in favour there are they?

How could we still Improve our Current Exam System?

In order to further improve the exam system, I would propose that we have a week of continuous assessment before Easter to take the pressure off the June bottleneck. Each student could still then enjoy their Easter holidays and return refreshed for the last push towards June’s finals.

I think by spreading the load more, it would mean that all the focus for the student isn’t placed on one part of the academic year. This would greatly reduce the intensity levels for those two weeks in June.

Would studying a reduced amount of subjects (five instead of seven for example) be an option? This seems to work well enough in the UK. I think the benefit of this specialisation would mean that students could spend more time exploring and even enjoying their selected subjects.

It might also take away the focus on how many CAO points a subject can yield and allow them to investigate topics they genuinely have an interest in. 

Third level courses are usually made up of quite specific content compared to our current broad based Leaving Cert. Is our second level system too broad?  Are our students ‘Jack’s and Jill’s of all trades and masters of none’?

Transition Year.

Another potential option might be making Transition year (TY) compulsory and implementing a form of continuous assessment at the end of that year. This would ensure the majority of students would be at least eighteen years old upon sitting their final exams and therefore be in a better position to decide on their third level/further education options also. 

TY students could still enjoy their trips, experiences, and work placement in tandem with assessment in a limited amount of defined subjects. In addition to this, I would also like to see a system where TY’s have the opportunity to sample leaving cert subjects. This would give them a deeper understanding of subject content, prior to making subject choices for Senior Cycle.

The Doubts and Concerns Remain.

I am in favour of a continuous assessment model but still feel that the final written exam is the fairest way to differentiate the students academically. The current AAC proposal, as mentioned above, will carry 40% of the marks across ALL subjects. It shouldn’t be one size fits all in my opinion and I have already voiced these concerns to the department.

Whatever about other subjects, I don’t see the universal benefits of completing a project in my own subject ‘Maths’ for many and varied reasons. 40% of the current material would need to be removed or not taught on the syllabus, meaning that students would miss out on basic Maths skills required for many third level courses and indeed everyday life.

An AAC of 25% would be more relevant in some cases, including my own subject Maths. Unfortunately, that proposal seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
There are improvements we could potentially make to our exam system, but I feel a lot is still right with it.

We need initiatives that would take some pressure off our students, while maintaining the core integrity of the process. Ultimately, as we stand here now in August 2026, I still firmly believe that sitting down to final exam papers should be retained as the main and fairest judgement of a student’s ability. Joe
 

“Today is a new day. I can try yesterday’s unfinished task again”