School Leaving Certificate Examination

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21088, 13 February 1934, Page 8

School Leaving Certificate Examination

I The Minister for Education, in an interview published in " The Press " yesterday, gave an account of the new school leaving certificate and of the examination to be taken for it. The substance of what he said is that the university entrance examination (matriculation), at the same standard as at present and under the same control, will furnish the certificate papers in the subjects now on the syllabus, while the Education Department will set papers in additional subjects " of a more or less practical "nature."' Accordingly, there will be " no increase in the number of "examinations"': or. in other word.", matriculation will still be the packhorse, with the department's little donkey trotting alongside. The same meaning is to be taken from some rather confused remarks of the Minister's on the subject of standards. The leaving certificate examination, he said, is to be held " in conjunction with, and be of the " same standard as, the present uni- " versity entrance examination," of which the university, of course, "fixes the standard"; but the department, being in control of the certificate examination, will use "its judgment as to what standard " it fixes " for that. Since it is already stated that the certificate examination is to be " of the same " standard " as matriculation—necessarily so, the papers being the same, except in the special subject* for t certificate only—the department's

adjusting those special papers to the standard; and most likely Mr Masters intended to say something like that. But his statement as a whole shows how very poor a reform is about to be wrought. The department is at last going to do its duty by issuing a leaving certificate: but the machinery will I be that of the university entrance j examination, amplified a little. It ! is regrettable that the university has consented to this arrangement, willingly at first, though signs of anxiety began to appear at the last meeting of the senate; for it has almost certainly exchanged a bad position for a worse. It is now committed to serving the department's needs, and will not easily escape from the commitment. Before, though it did this service by providing an examination widely regarded and used and abused as a , leaving and labelling test, it was j fettered by no engagement and had | only its own policy to consider. Nothing is clearer than that the | entrance examination at the present standard is almost useless and that the standard ought to be raised. But when the senate reaches the point of action, it will be obstructed ! by the department, which will certainly (and rightly) not want to laise ihe leaving certificate standard, and will strenuously object to being deprived of a highly convenient machine. This, of course, is why the department makes such a point of not wishing to introduce " another examination.'' It is, however, much more important to make examinations work well than to keep their number down; and under the new arrangement matriculation will work as badly as ever, witn a new impediment to reform in the way.