Bearding the Lion: Reforming Assessment in Junior Cycle

Abstract

This chapter addresses the most contested aspect of junior cycle reform in Ireland, a dispute about assessment that, more than once, threatened to derail the entire reform initiative. The analysis highlights broad agreement about limitations of the existing system, about the need for change and the importance of assessment in ensuring educational quality. The difficulties encountered in agreeing the specific nature of change are highlighted, reflecting a sociocultural approach that considers the debate from the differing perspectives of stakeholders. This chapter outlines student assessment and certification at lower secondary level internationally and highlights the rationale for reform in the Irish case, arguments shaped by domestic and international factors. Tensions between the formative and summative components in the Irish reforms reveal how initial positivity towards the former did not translate into acceptance of fundamental change in the latter. This chapter also explores the debate about the role of teachers in grading the work of their own students for certification purposes, outlining how the agreement eventually reached, while introducing some element of school-based assessment, left in place a system of external exams with a potential impact on teaching and learning not wholly different from what it was intended to replace.