Ms Andrea Feeney:

We changed the timing of the orals this year to the Easter holidays. That was done because of Covid and as a response to the level of disruption and interruption students had already faced in their learning this year. What happens when the oral examinations are on in a normal year is that the students' teachers are away. If their teachers are engaging in the orals in other schools, they are away from their sixth year classes. This can be challenging and difficult for the teachers and students involved. The decision was taken this year to move the oral examinations to the Easter holidays in order to mitigate any potential for further disruption to learning. We had to make sure that we had enough examiners to move it to the Easter holidays and we had to provide for sufficient reserves because of expected attrition due to Covid. Covid has had an impact on all aspects of society and it impacted on the delivery of these examinations so we ended up with a final total of 600 students in 14 schools who were not able to take their oral examinations at Easter. We will facilitate those students as soon as we possibly can.

Part of the announcement was that students and teachers would get a break over Easter. In moving the orals to the first week of the Easter holidays, there was a sense that in the second week they would still have their break so we allowed that break to happen. We had also notified schools in advance that there would be a period for late orals. Those late orals are there in a normal year to facilitate students who become ill at examination time. We set aside that period, commencing on 4 May, for the late orals this year in order to provide for students who became ill and also in the event that we would have to reschedule because of attrition due to Covid. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to ensure that we had enough examiners to undertake the tests in the initial window, we had attrition due to Covid. We made every effort to organise the tests for those students who were affected by it and we are arranging them at the earliest possible opportunity, which is that period commencing next week. There had been a criticism to the effect that we should have had them last week. The reason I have mentioned in this regard is that the break needed to be there for students. It has also been suggested that we should have had them this week. In having the capacity we need, we are also being conscious of not impacting further on teaching and learning times. As a result, we are using retired examiners and teachers who are not in schools in order to ensure that capacity. They are not available to us all of the time so by having the date set aside commencing on 4 May, we have capacity in the system to do it. We provided that date in order to bring a level of certainty. I appreciate that it is not ideal for the students concerned, but that certainty was there.

The bigger question the Deputy asked was on how we protect ourselves from these interruptions and issues into the future. Going back to the senior cycle reform process and the interruption of Covid over the past two years, we have seen that if we had a type of assessment system or senior cycle programme where there is more dispersed assessment, it might give us greater capacity to cope with emergency situations as and when they arise. That is a long answer to the Deputy's short question, but it is important to give the detail.