Brendan Ryan (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

First, I congratulate Tara O'Sullivan for taking this to this point today and organising the petition and I thank the officials from the State Examinations Commission and the Department for coming in to talk to us about the petition today.

A couple of things come to mind. Mr. Ó Donnchadha, or perhaps it was Mr. Farrell, seemed to suggest that the Department would not consider mocks an effective use of school time. If that is the case, has the Department made recommendations to schools to desist from them? To the Department's knowledge, are there any schools not doing mocks on a regular basis? It would seem to me to be a feature of school life. To suggest that it ought not happen is perhaps something that we should not be suggesting. I would suggest that it is something that will continue and that the school community likes doing them. Parents like them as well because they test their children.

It was touched on somewhat but in terms of capturing feedback about time in the exams in a systematic way, do the delegates believe that is being dealt with adequately on an ongoing basis? Presumably it is factored into decisions in the following year and so on. How is the time to be allowed decided in the first instance? Is it the case that a decision is made that it will be a two hour exam and that, therefore, the questions are to fit into a two hour scheme? Should time be a factor in exams? I know that we have to manage exams and the timetable but it would seem to me that, if he or she has a certain amount of knowledge, a person should never come out of an exam feeling that he or she had more to say and to do and that time was a factor. I would be interested in the witnesses' comments in that regard.

In terms of perhaps not endorsing commercial entities and all of that kind of stuff, is there a case for regulation of these commercial entities given that they are likely to be an ongoing feature of school life?

I note the two actions suggested, including sending a message to providers. The question is who would do that. Would it be the Department or this committee? The Department committed to drawing attention to website materials and so on.