In response to disquiet expressed by some of Ireland's leading industrialists about a possible decline in academic standards, Minister Batt O’Keeffe had instructed several Department of Education officials to conduct a “profile analysis” of grades.

The officials reviewed the number of first-class honours degrees awarded by the universities and the institutes of technology since 1991
and examined Leaving Cert higher level grades between 1992 and 2009.

Leaving Certificate
The analysis of overall grades in the Leaving Certificate between 1992 to 2009 shows a significant increase in the proportions scoring at grade A or B, and grade A or B or C, at honours level.

Some 27 per cent of Leaving Certificate students attained A and B grades in 1992 compared with 43 per cent this year, while the proportion who scored A, B and C grades rose from 62 per cent to 76 per cent.

However, most of the increase took place during the 1990s and grades have largely stabilised since the establishment of the State Examination Commission in 2003, the report says.

Universities
The investigation by department officials found a similar trend of increases in first-class honours awards in the universities, with the number of firsts soaring in the 10 years up to 2008.

More than 16 per cent of university graduates got the top grade two years ago compared with just over 8 per cent in 1997.

Institutes of Technology (ITs)
Similarly, the rate of first-class honours degrees awarded by institutes of technology (excluding DIT) jumped from around 11 per cent of graduates in 1998 to nearly 17 per cent a decade on.

Background
Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe was first alerted to the importance of the grade inflation issue at a dinner meeting convened last December by Google vice-president John Herlihy at the company’s headquarters in Barrow Street, Dublin. The aim of the meeting was to alert the minister to the full extent of the grade inflation crisis.

At the meeting, major multi-national employers raised concerns about a perceived decline in standards among graduates coming out of Irish colleges, as well as the ongoing problems in the uptake of higher-level maths and science subjects for the Leaving Certificate.

Participants – who included Jim O’Hara of Intel and Martin Murphy of Hewlett Packard – indicated that many multinationals were reluctant to recruit from certain colleges because of concerns about standards. There were even suggestions that several institutes of technology (ITs) and one university were on an unofficial recruitment “blacklist”.

At the core of the problem was grade inflation across the education sector, from Leaving Cert to third-level degrees.

While things looked good on the surface - with a 100 per cent increase in the number of first-class honours degrees over 20 years and a 40 percent increase in the proportion securing more than 400 CAO points in the Leaving Cert - there was a gulf between the figures and the experience of employers, who often struggled to find students with the range of skills and the flexibility they needed.

One participant at the Barrow Street meeting said the education system was “broken and needed mending”.

Commenting on the findings of the department review of grades, Minister O’Keeffe said it was important to listen to the concerns of influential voices in the employer community and to be responsive to boardroom demands.

"Our approach to developing education policy must be strategic and more aligned with industry needs,” he said.

He indicated that the National Strategy for Higher Education, which will be published before the summer, will address fundamental questions about the quality of graduates, the quality of teaching and learning, resourcing the system and responding to the needs of enterprise.

Quality Assurance
The key to addressing possible grade inflation in higher education is through better internal quality assurance and external quality review, Minister O'Keeffe said.

The agencies responsible for these tasks - HETAC; the Further Education and Training Awards Council; the National Qualifications Authority of Ireland and the Irish Universities Quality Board - have all been subject to external review by international panels and have been judged to be performing these functions to relevant international standards.

However, these bodies are soon to be merged into a new single qualifications and quality assurance agency, and legislation is currently being drafted to set up this new entity. The Bill is expected to be published this summer and the new qualifications and quality assurance agency will be set up early next year. (Sources: Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Business Post)