Mr. Jim Miley:

I agree wholeheartedly with the Deputy's view that we have a stratified second-level system with deep-seated inequality within it. It is certainly something we are very conscious of. The question is what changes we can make to the leaving certificate to try to cater for the varying learning styles, not just abilities. We all know people who have come through the leaving certificate and are brilliant at particular aspects of life and learning but who cannot do a written examination and fail abysmally as a result.

The curricular assessment report will, hopefully, deal with this issue comprehensively but we have done this already in junior cycle. There has been substantial reform of the junior cycle where the broader skills base and interests of students are catered for. When speaking to second-level students, as I have, they will say they did fine in primary school and up to junior cycle, but once they hit fifth year they fell off a cliff. The model of reform of junior cycle gives us something to work with, combined with the assessment piece we spoke about previously.