Dr. Jim Gleeson:

I concur with what has been said by Professor O'Leary and Dr. Looney, but we must be realistic about the limitations of examinations. I have looked at the current system in some detail, and the content standards have to be inferred, in the cases of many syllabuses, because there is a lack of objectives or no objectives. The standards are not published, which again highlights the complexity of this issue. Questions underlie the use of attainment referencing, where the fundamental premise is that the issue is with the examination rather than the students. That, however, ignores other possibilities, such as teaching practices in schools, for example, which could be influential. Therefore, the issue here need not, necessarily, be the examination alone. My last point is that our marking schemes are only published after the event and that, in turn, only leads to more teaching to the test the next year. We must be realistic, then, about the limitations of public examinations, as against perhaps some aspects of continuous assessment.