Ireland: Also examining secondary to postsecondary transitions

Last month I had the opportunity to participate in a colloquium hosted in Dublin, Ireland by IA/HERO, the Irish American Higher Education Research Organisation. The colloquium this year was focused largely around the leaving certificate or "leaving cert", which might be described in short as a combination exit exam and college entrance exam. Many feel that there are numerous problems with the leaving cert system as it exists now. A Sept. 21 conference on the leaving cert issue convened a diverse array of education stakeholders from across Ireland, including the Minister of Education and Skills, and we American IA/HERO delegates were fortunate enough to be able to attend. In green below is an excerpt from a paper prepared for the conference by Professor Áine Hyland.

The following is a list of some of the key concerns raised by various stakeholders, within and outside the education system:

• Many students are entering higher education without adequate skills (including numeracy and literacy skills) to cope with higher education.
• The Leaving Certificate rewards rote-learning and does not reward problem-solving, critical thinking, or self-directed learning. Consequently many students make the transition to higher education without the generic skills needed to cope successfully at that level

These sound very much like the issues states are grappling with as they re-evaluate high school exams, including exit exams. I heard repeatedly during the colloquium that the new Minister of Education and Skills, Ruairi Quinn, has the leaving cert on his reform agenda. Perhaps changes to the leaving cert can inform improvements to U.S. efforts to embed college-readiness indicators in high school assessments.