The Irish Times - Wednesday, August 22, 2012

SEN FLYNN, Education Editor

THE LEAVING Cert exam and the CAO points system do not promote positive education values or personal development, university presidents have advised Minister for Education Ruair Quinn.

In a report presented to the Minister yesterday, they argue the selection process for higher education is having disproportionate and undesirable effects on student learning . . . at second level.

The presidents back a new ranking system for Leaving Cert scores, more common entry routes into college, a reduction in Leaving Cert grades and new efforts to incentivise strategically important subjects. However, they stress there is no perfect system and no perfect solution.

A taskforce chaired by NUI president Dr Philip Nolan will examine the proposals and report back before the end of the year.

We do not wish to be prescriptive in regard to the issues to be addressed by the task force, the report says. It backs away from awarding CAO points for absolute scores in the Leaving Cert and focusing on the relative performance in the subject. Essentially, it says, the highest points would be awarded to the students who perform best relative to their peers in the specific subject.

The most obvious way to convert merit ranking into points is to use percentiles, with those in the top 1 per cent getting 100 points, those in the next 1 per cent getting 99 points and so on, with those in the bottom 1 per cent getting one point, the report says.

An advantage of this option is that it is independent of subject workload, marking differences, grade distribution etc. It could therefore be considered a fairer system of rewarding student effort and performance. It could incentivise students to take what are currently regarded as the harder subjects.

Other recommendations are:

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University heads back new points system