Dr. Jim Gleeson:

I agree with much of what Professor Collins has said. As referred to earlier by Ms Tara Kelly, clerk to the committee in the online foyers, it is unfortunate that we are talking about leaving certificate reform rather than senior cycle reform. Having said that, many schools have domesticated transition year to a state where it is not recognisable as against what it was originally intended, and that is the nature of things. Arguably, the same situation has happened with the leaving certificate applied. My fundamental answer to the Deputy's question is that both transition year and the leaving certificate applied, LCA, in different ways, share a very different culture to the traditional leaving certificate establishment culture that Dr. Anne Looney and others have been talking about. We need to be very careful about interfering with those cultures because we could end up the poorer for it.