After years of lobbying to update the agricultural science Leaving Cert (LC) curriculum, the new course was rolled out in September 2019. Although, the curriculum itself is clear according to IASTA; with COVID-19, major problems lie in the examination of the new course.

A number of curriculum changes were announced last Friday including some small changes to the new agricultural science course.

Teacher and PRO of Irish Agricultural Science Teachers’ Association (IASTA) Johnny Gleeson said: “Other subjects had sensible changes made, for example, the removal of experiments from the construction studies coursework. We feel that mandatory experiments should be removed from ag science too, due to lack of access to laboratory time during COVID-19, but this has not happened.”

Lack of consultation

“There was no correspondence in advance of these changes being made. IASTA, a key stakeholder in formulating the changes to the curriculum was not consulted. And although we (IASTA) have now spoken with representatives of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), to highlight the issues, no amendments have been agreed as of yet. They told us that they would examine the issues and revert to us,” Gleeson said.

Individual investigative study

“The major stumbling block is the individual investigative study (IIS), which we feel cannot be completed,” Gleeson continued. “The first problem was pre-COVID-19 in that the IIS brief which should have been released in September 2019 did not arrive till late December 2019.

“Then some teachers had not received training on how to do the new project and for the ones that had started their training, this was interrupted and halted completely with COVID-19. Therefore teachers have been unable to help students even start their projects.”

Gleeson outlined how the course format for LC students should work.

“The main aim is to get the project done in fifth year, submitting it in April of sixth year. A good chunk of it must be done in fifth year due to nature of agricultural seasonality as students need a full year on a farm to collect their data.

An issue now is that even with restrictions being lifted, the vast majority of the growing season has passed

“COVID-19 has resulted in many students not being able to collect data for their IIS due to the lockdown with lack of access to farms, laboratories and school resources.

“An issue now is that even with restrictions being lifted, the vast majority of the growing season has passed if the students chosen IIS was based on crops.

“The exam would account for 75% and the IIS accounts for 25% so therefore students cannot be expected to complete this element of the course for LC 2021.”

‘In the dark’ on exam paper

Teachers claim that they are also in the dark about how the exam paper will be made up. As this is the first year of examination of the new course, they urgently want sample papers released.

“Because this is a new course, we have no idea how to prioritise topics. We knew the structure of the old course very well and we adapt our teaching to that but because this is a new course, we can’t.

“We lost, on average, 15% of the teaching year due to COVID-19. We are therefore calling for a wide variety of questions in the LC to allow for the strong possibility that some topics may not be covered due to loss of class time.”

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