Mr. John Irwin:

The Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools, ACCS, welcomes the opportunity to address the joint committee. The association has been engaged actively in the comprehensive review of senior cycle, which has been carried out by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA. The ACCS is represented on the NCCA council.

During that consultation, stakeholders from community and comprehensive schools have participated in school-based reviews and in national seminars on this topic as part of the consultation process facilitated by the NCCA. We will now take a look at the focus of those consultations, which talked about the pathways, programmes and flexibility for senior cycle going forward.

From those consultations, the NCCA published the Senior Cycle Review: Consultation Document July 2019. We very much concur with the purpose as expressed in that document that, "Senior cycle education aims to help every student towards fulfilling their potential." The document also says, "senior cycle equips students for diverse and sustainable futures so that they can embrace full, active citizenship and participation in society and the economy as they learn and as they make the transition to life beyond school." We must accept, however, that the current form of assessment, where we have examinations at the end of the two-year cycle scheduled over three weeks in June, has a powerful backwash effect on the way senior cycle is experienced by all stakeholders at present. We very much challenge the notion that this is the best system we can go with, or the notion that the current system is even a fair one.

Since the introduction of the junior cycle programme in 2015, we can see that there is a significant disconnect between the educational experience at junior cycle and senior cycle at post-primary education. At junior cycle we now have a range of different assessment modes, with a focus on skills and competencies, as opposed to the senior cycle that is still very much focused on content and recall rather than skills and competencies.

In considering the assessment options currently available at senior cycle, we believe there is an absolute need for a broader range of components appropriately spaced over the two-year cycle in module format, as my colleague, Mr. Curtis, described earlier, rather than on three weeks of examinations at the end of the senior cycle.

We acknowledge that there is confidence in the manner in which the State Examinations Commission conducts its business around the current examinations, but we argue that significant improvements could be made. There is a significant conflict in what we are trying to achieve with the examination at senior cycle, between recall and understanding. The focus should not be so much on recall and retention. The focus should move to understanding. In this regard, the place of technology and its potential to support greater diversity in approaches to assessment across senior cycle should be explored fully.

I fully agree with Mr. Curtis's statement that we need to invest significantly in the IT infrastructure in our schools. I am encouraged by goal No. 1 in the Department of Education Statement of Strategy 2021-2023, which looks at a new digital strategy for schools. We sincerely hope that this strategy will be a significantly funded strategy. We must use the opportunities we have gained over the past two years as opportunities to normalise technology in our schools.

I refer also to our examination and assessment systems in this regard. If we are to start looking at truly inclusive examination systems, we must question why we have the process for reasonable accommodation in certificate examinations, RACE, which brought in following the introduction of the examination, and significant numbers of students who have to avail of RACE? We should be trying to explore the opportunity of assessment that is accessible to all. The key and final point I will make is that senior cycle assessment must move to a system that is very much more concentrated on skills and competencies in a modular framework, and which is more consistent with the system now encapsulated in the junior-cycle framework and in third level education, when the students move on into further and higher education and apprenticeships in the future.

We have included other significant pieces in our previously submitted written statement, but I am conscious now of the time available for the committee members. I would be more than delighted to engage in our debate.