Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for their contributions. I found them particularly exciting, if I can use that word, because I feel there is an historic opportunity for us to grasp reform of the leaving certificate and do something with it. I do not think anybody who has been through it or who has a family member going through it or who is in the system can pretend it should stay as it is. Even the term "leaving certificate" is a complete misnomer because I do not think anybody genuinely expects that the majority of students will use it as an entry into the workforce. It does not provide an entry into the workforce. It is an entrance examination for the next academic phase for most students.

We have a particularly unequal education system, which is especially pronounced at second level. Second-level schools compete against each other. Social mobility means there is a push to get into what is perceived to be, in any given community, a more academic school, which can sometimes be fee-paying and sometimes not. As a result, there is a stepping-stone effect with the most desirable or second-most desirable schools and, at the end of that entire ladder, there is always a school in any given community that has a disproportionate number of migrant and Traveller children in addition to children with special educational needs. We allow those schools to exist because we want to allow social mobility, and choice and competition between second-level schools, to continue. It is the patronage model and we are stuck with it unless we decide to have a referendum on it.

The point is it is already very unequal. As has been said, people can game the system to try to buy results by getting grinds. Certain second-level schools cannot even offer higher-level subjects because they cannot justify the resources. Those subjects include higher-level maths and Irish so how can someone be a primary school teacher if he or she goes to that school? He or she cannot. It is already particularly unequal. Some 85% of students who attend disadvantaged second-level schools do the leaving certificate. The average percentage of students, overall, who do it, is approximately 91% so 15% of disadvantaged students do not make it to the leaving certificate at all.

We also have the issue of piled-on pressure at the end of sixth year, which does not indicate anybody's ability in anything. It might make someone good at training to be a politician, where he or she does all his or her work at the end of five years and pretends he or she has been working very hard all the way through. Most of us do. Anyway, it is all piled in at the end to prove your worth. It is not surprising many young people do not make it through. It is also not surprising that the lesson they have learned and the training they have received in the second-level system does not in any way equip them for the future.

My main focus is on getting the witnesses' reflections on what I have said about the inequalities within the system. Does the system in any way equip young people to be the best of themselves, to think independently, to trust their own judgments and opinions and to have the self-confidence to go to the next stage of their lives? Is it just a hole they have to fill to get to the next point? I would be interested in comments on that. It is not directed at anybody in particular. I am just interested in the witnesses' reflections.