Mr. Dalton Tattan:

I thank the Deputy. I believe that Mr. Moran may have the numbers on the submissions, and if we do not have the figures here we will certainly get them for the Deputy after the session today.

On the point made about continuous assessments, I am inclined to agree with the Deputy about our exposure in this regard. One can see it with the pandemic that countries such as Germany, and in other places too, had a lot of the assessment pieces already in the bank before Covid-19 hit. That meant that they were far better placed to pivot when they needed to figure out how they were going to move their group of final school year students into further and higher education and so on. Because Ireland relies much more on the examinations in June, we had to create the calculated grades process and the accredited grades this year. Certainly, there is learning out of that. The Deputy asked about learning from the experiences of the past two years. That is certainly a learning that we would take in the context of the continuing reliance, particularly in quite a number of subjects, on the final exams.

The Deputy raised the issue of the digital divide, which I believe is a fair point. It is a concern shared by many people about how our children are taught in school and how they are accessing information, whether there is an over reliance on this, and whether there are other ways to interact with information for learning and so on. It is changing. It is about trying to get the balance right. Obviously, the digital skills are very important. Deputy Farrell spoke about preparing students for beyond school, which is also very important aspect. It has been an aspect of all of our lives over the past 20 years particularly. It is about how we best support teachers to integrate those tools so that in the teaching and in the learning and in what happens in the classroom they are used as further means by which to enhance learning rather than simply replacing other things.

With regard to the leaving certificate for next year, our approach has been to have conversations with public health, and we plan to hold further conversations with public health tomorrow. Our approach to date is that the various assessment pieces would happen largely as normal, so that the leaving certificate would be running as it did in 2021 with the junior certificate running as well. Schools have managed to stay open and we believe that they will continue to stay open. That is the key for us. From January to early March last year that just did not happen and we had to make decisions around that.

The Deputy also asked about the oral exams. We had an arrangement in 2021 where they happened largely over the Easter period and the week after that, run by schools. Again, a plus from that was there was less impact and therefore less need for substitution. Teachers were able to continue with their students right through that second term until Easter. It was less disruptive and there was more protection of the school year. That was interesting and should be explored, particularly in the context of senior cycle reform.

I will hand over to Mr. Moran now for figures on the submissions.