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3 Draft Leaving Certificate specifications consultations

3 Draft Leaving Certificate specifications consultations

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Assessment and Reporting

Essentially, the purpose of assessment and reporting at this stage of education is to support learning. This short course supports a wide variety of approaches to assessment. Some learning outcomes lend themselves to once-off assessment, others to assessment on an ongoing basis as students engage in different learning activities such as discussing, explaining, presenting, planning, caring, practising skills and, at an appropriate level, finding out information.  In these contexts, students with their teachers and peers reflect upon and make judgements about their own and others’ learning by looking at the quality of particular pieces of work (according to their ability). They plan the next steps in their learning, based on feedback they give and receive. Ongoing assessment can support the student in their learning journey and in preparing for the Classroom-Based Assessments related to this short course.

A personal project provides students with an element of choice in what they will present for assessment and the format it will be presented in. It also provides opportunities for students to take some responsibility for gathering evidence of learning for the portfolio of learning they generate as part of their Level 2 Learning Programme (L2LP). See the L2LP guidelines on this page for more information on the use of portfolios in L2LPs. The Level 2 portfolio for each student should include evidence of learning related to each of the four strands of this short course.

Assessment is most effective when it moves beyond marks and grades and reporting focuses not just on how the student has done in the past but on the next steps for further learning. Student progress and achievement in short courses, both in ongoing assessments and in the specific Classroom-Based Assessments relating to this short course will be communicated to parents in interim reporting and in the Junior Cycle Profile of Achievement (JCPA). To support teachers and schools, an Assessment Toolkit is available online. Along with the guide to the Subject Learning and Assessment Review (SLAR) process, the Assessment Toolkit will include learning, teaching, assessment and reporting support material. 

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