Ireland has given all junior cert and leaving cert students 100% in oral and practical parts of their exams!! [Edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

[Holdmenow]

The Irish department of education has awarded ALL students 100% in all oral exams (for languages) and all practical exams (music and home economics). All of the practicals only account for a part of their full grade (usually 25% or so). I think it’s a lovely gesture in these hard times! What do you think?

I’m sure they could @clavinova but it’s all done by external examiners on an anonymous basis (they use numbers not names) so as to stop any bias etc I presume!?

Presumably that was considered Clavinova but the 100% option was decided on.

I think it is awful but I don't see what else they can do. From what I read I would imagine they are hoping against hope to go ahead with the exams in June. Students who were relying on their oral to give them the edge over other students have lost that edge now, especially in Irish (where it's 40%). My 5th year student is also afraid of how high it's going to push points up for the following year.

I would imagine this will be taken into account (along with them having missing possibly 3 months of school) and maybe use the results of 2019 for setting the points for 2021.

There'll be plenty making the Irish grade for primary school teaching now!

Does this negate the importance of oral exams in future Leaving Certs? If they can be readily scrapped, why have them at all? This stress over June exams is also a strong argument for continual assessment as opposed to everything resting on one (or 2) papers.

Its the same as cancelling them. Everyone is on the same footing now so it wouldn't matter if they gave 0% or 100% but giving 100% takes some of the stress off them. Eg in Irish LC they all now have 40%. It gives them a bit of a lift in a shit time.

If the points go up this year because of it they'll come back down next year. The only important thing about the points is how they compare to other applicants that year. On the whole, you are only competing against your own year group for college places

When I read this I thought it was awful for the more able students. As in Ireland all students compete against each other purely on points, it also gives eg music students an advantage over those who didn’t do subjects with practicals. Overall I don’t see it as a positive except for the lazy and less able - and ok, great for that latter group but the point of the exam system is to allow for differentiation on merit surely? They probably had no option but i don’t know why this would be celebrated!

But molten if you were depending on an excellent oral result to boost you above your peers you have now lost that edge. It has taken away that advantage of those who were good at speaking the language or worked hard at it.

Yeah, that's true Smithesque (and I have a ds doing LC who is in that boat) but the circumstances really are extraordinary.

They dont give 100%, they waiver the exams.
so the final mark is now assessed based on the written exam only. So if u dont study, u still get ur deserved crappy mark