I should clarify that it wouldnât disadvantage them in relation to expected results this year. There are clear structural disadvantages in education overall - prob from before primary level
This is it⌠The leaving cert for the most part is bought. It desperately, desperately needs to be overhauled.
Reading a poem does not really help you answer an exam question on that poem.
You need notes on what the exam question answer expects you to say. You need the language and phraseology. The poem is irrelevant to that in many way.
The likes of the Institute have packaged that for all subjects.
To be fair to that lad , after reading that I would not describe him as lazy . He might also make a brilliant GP .
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Going off on a tangent here. When I was a kid I was sent to Mount Sion CBS. It was the nearest school to our house and I moved from the primary to the secondary. There was no private school in Waterford unless you counted Newtown, which was for Quakers, Protestants and problem Catholic kids from south Dublin whose parents wanted them as far away as possible. Ascendancy Protestants in our locality sent their kids to public school in England, disfiguring them for life as it happened, now that they didnât have the British Army to work out their aggressions on and drugs having become a thing in England after the swinging sixties.
People who had notions sent their kids to Waterpark Christian Brothers College, a free school that played rugby. The cream of Waterford went to Waterpark, the rest of us would say, rich and thick.
De la Salle was for the people from the bottom of the town who didnât have notions and country kids from Waterford, South Kilkenny and Wexford. Some of the country kids would board and some would come in on the train every day from as far afield as Ramsgrange and Wellingtonbridge.
There was no university in the town and a thriving industrial base. In our school the object of the game was to get you as far as the inter and then get you into a factory on the Industrial Estate, the Glass or into a trade. For the very bright kids the object was to get them into the Civil Service and the ones in between increasingly became earmarked for the Regional College as it expanded. University wasnât even discussed as an option. The career guidance counsellor, the aptly named Bull Connolly had never heard of the Matriculation exam. Bright kids left after the inter because their parents needed them to become breadwinners, one very bright chap left to become a coal man, another to be the telegram boy for the town.
In Waterpark the emphasis was slightly different, the boys being educated for the banks and the insurance companies in the town and in De La Salle to become farmers on the one hand and for the townies factory hands.
It was a complacent time, the town was doing well, but still the lack of ambition for kids was absolutely stunning in hindsight. It wasnât that kids were distraught that they didnât make the cut for university it was that university never crossed their consciousness. The whole sector was for somebody else. So schools didnât aspire to it and the whole sector in the town sank into mediocrity. The kids were bored and the teachers were bored.
Then the recessions hit and the factories closed and the civil service stopped recruiting and the only way to a decent existence for many involved a university degree and we had a school system that couldnât deliver kids into it.
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Jesus , Fagan
All you are missing is Waterfordâs answer to Gerry Hannon to shout abuse at you when you are on Late Late launching a book
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TBF twas the parents that made him repeat. God knows what heâs be at now otherwise.
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An insightful piece
But the overall average results in these deis type schools would still be very poor. For every 1 student trying hard to better themselves there would be 5 who donât give a shit for whatever reason. Normalizing results to previous patterns would therefore further disadvantage these hard working kids who are already disadvantaged .
Normalising results would normalise them. The phase that was thrown around by the Dept is âexpected performanceâ - no more, no less.
Donât fret pal. The private school class of 2020 will produce itâs usual share of corrupt bankers, vacuous rugby players, and chinless wonder ultra right wing Blueshirt types like Neale Richmond. The 2020 Leaving Cert will be their Vietnam but without the PTSD.
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Edgy
Oooft
And the Wake Up Boo Eoin OâBroins too.
David Drumm went to his local CBS. Seanie Fitz went to Pres Bray. Pres Bray isnât fee paying now, but might have been in Seanie Fitzâs day. The most corrupt fucker in the history of the State was a CBS boy too.
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CJH?
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Is this O Connor lad managing Ballyhale âChuckyâ O Connor from Waterford and he played for the village at one point if Iâm rembering right?
No the Ballyhale Manager is James Jockser OâConnor from Lismore. He played full back for Waterford for a couple of years in the 90s. Has managed a few teams in East Cork. The OâConnor you are thinking of is Liam Chuck OâConnor who is from Erins Own in the city and was a Waterford stalwart in the 80s. He transferred to James Stephens when he moved to Kilkenny.
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Cheers. No idea how my reply ended up in this thread!!