Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I wonder if Prometheus is the wrong person from Greek mythology to mention or if are we more like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill again. Camus said "One must imagine Sisyphus happy", so let us undertake that with gusto. I found the presentations extremely informative. I wish the format was looser because there were so many points at which I would have liked to stop the witnesses and have asked them to explain particular points but the number of people involved would not allow that. I am particularly struck by Professor Looney's idea of a social imaginary. I was thinking back to when the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, appeared on the "Late Late Show" when he was Taoiseach during one of the first Covid lockdowns. There was moral panic when he took a piece of paper from his pocket because our social imaginary is that we must know these things by rote. The idea is that you answer a question on Shakespeare but if the quote is not in your head you are not allowed to look at the text. That is a bizarre thing to ask a person to do. What kind of a measure is that? There is also a social imaginary that we have a meritocracy whereas in fact it is as Professor Collins said; it crystallises inequalities. Even though it is fair in some senses, it is not fair in so many other senses.

There are a huge number of things I would like to unpack but time will not allow me to do so. In the broadest sense, I wonder if we should look at the idea of splitting the summative part of the leaving certificate, if indeed it is summative because I think it only effectively quantifies that knowing element and that it does not touch the sides of either doing or being, and the matriculation element of it. Those are two separate purposes and we concentrate unduly on the matriculation element and it becomes extremely competitive. In medicine, veterinary or whatever else you need to be at a minimum standard in your academic capabilities but that may not be the best determinant of what kind of a doctor you will be, for example. We have all met doctors who might have been good with the scalpel but not fantastic in terms of their bedside manner, for example. On the other side of the coin, there are courses, which might not be as highly trafficked, for which the points intake is lower than the level of academic achievement that would be appropriate for the course.

If we decoupled the summative and matriculation elements, would we be able to state what the minimum academic standard is and that we would look at a students' other abilities in the meantime? For example, we could look at students' ability to engage in group work or to problem solve using social skills, which is incredibly important in a range of professions. Would that allow teachers to contribute in a better way? One of the things suggested in Professor O'Leary's paper was that there could be a senior certificate. Perhaps there could be a teachers' assessment in that. On the train up to Dublin, I was reading about a toolmaker and the idea of the person who is gifted with his or her hands and who is thinking about things in a particular way.

I am not sure how that could be measured in the leaving certificate, whereas a teacher could tell you the student is a toolmaker and will be exceptional at it. I do not know if I have asked a question yet.

I want to give Professor Stobart the opportunity to expand on something he mentioned in his opening statement. In one sentence he stated that Ireland is very distinctive in terms of not involving teachers in the assessment process. I want to afford him the opportunity to expand on that, because he wants to free us a little from our own context. That would be welcome. I ask the other witnesses to comment on the idea of decoupling the summative from the matriculation element.

I also want to give Professor Hyland the opportunity to expand on the idea of modularisation with a view to moving towards continuous assessment across the two-year cycle. I ask the Professor to outline how she thinks that would work in a secondary school setting. I will leave it at that.