Teachers dismiss exam performance fears over text messaging

Any literacy problems caused by texting are a drop in the ocean compared with other dangers children face when using mobile phones, a teachers’ association has said.

The Association of School Leaders said parents should be more concerned about bullying.

In a statement following a report by the Irish State Examination Commission, which claimed that text messaging, with its use of phonetic spelling and little or no punctuation, posed a threat to the formal writing needed for exam sucess.

The report, written by the chief examiner, also blamed the frequency of grammatical errors and incorrect use of punctuation on texting, along with the way text messages encourage school children to give short answers to exam questions. The chief examiner cited last year's exam performance by 15-year-olds as an example.

Malcolm Trobe, head teacher and president of the ASCL disagreed:"There is no evident issue of conflict in language between texts and the language used in schools,” he told Computeractive.

“Children of secondary school and exam age are old enough to differentiate the between styles of writing.

“They know when to write in formally - for example a letter - and when they can write casually for example in texts.”

Instead he advised parents to be more concerned with other implications text messaging could have such as “the far more important topic of bullying by text.”

This view was shared by John Carr, technology advisor to the Children’s charity, NCH, who said he “does not believe that texting has any significance or bearing over exam results.”

“The issue of cyber bullying via texts or the internet is undoubtedly a big one, and has made bullying into a 24/7 event,” said Mr Carr.

“Children cannot run away from their phones like they would a physical bully, and this has led to some serious incidents.”

Mr Carr advised parents to take an active approach to keeping their children safe whilst using this medium and ensure they didn’t suffer from the effects of bullying.

“The most important thing for parents to do is convince their children to tell them if something is going on,” he said.

The best way to do this, he said, was to be open and supportive of the situation.

“Children will not confide in a parent if they believe their phone will be taken away from them, so explaining this is won’t happen is a good place to start,” he added.

In 2003, Irish 15-year-olds were among the top 10 performers in an international league table of literacy standards compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.