Fears for integrity of Irish exam as students get preview [Independent.ie]
- Published: 21 January 2011
STUDENTS have been given a detailed preview of exactly what to expect in an oral Irish exam in 15 months' time, after exam chiefs ignored the advice of experts.
Now a row has broken out over whether or not plans to change the oral Irish test next year will lead to a 'dumbing down' of the subject in the Leaving Certificate.
The change will come into effect in 2012 when the marks for the oral increase from 25pc to 40pc of the total of 600 marks for the subject.
As part of the change, students will be asked to give a description in Irish of a series of pictures on a page.
The advice from the experts was that the page should be given to the students only a few minutes before the test so that their ability would be really tested.
But this advice has been ignored. Instead, 20 pages with pictures have been made available to schools -- a year and three months before the test.
One of these pages will be selected by the examiner and the student will be asked to give a description of it in four minutes for a maximum of 80 marks.
Full Story: www.independent.ie
