Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the speakers for coming. I will make some comments before Ms Foley expands on some of the issues she raised. Much of what she said has resonated with many of us here. The Irish education system is almost uniquely set up to have mental health challenges within it. We separate children on the basis of religion and income and we separate them more than any other European country seems to. From my own experience, I know that children are coming to the school gate hungry and possibly having not slept the previous night or witnessed things that they probably should not as children and then facing the scenario of an oversized class with a teacher trying to balance all the needs of those children. We have one of the largest class sizes in Europe. It is coming down however and that should be acknowledged. It is a reality in the classroom. The SNA, as Mr. Honer rightly said, is under-appreciated in the system and is struggling for respect. There is an absolutely traumatic change at the most vital time, as Ms Leydon rightly said, in their formative years when going from the primary school setting to secondary school, with a complete change in the ethos and the exam-driven atmosphere. You are trying to tackle issues like homophobia or transphobia in a school. You have to worry about what the patron body has to say about those matters because we have a disproportionate number of schools under religious patronage.

Ms Foley made a point about the new junior certificate being a welcome development. The resistance to that change was something the Department had to grapple with. When we speak about leaving certificate change, I hear resistance to that and a determination to go back to where we were. Within all of that we must pay tribute to teachers, SNAs and those working in schools who do their absolute best to mind the mental health of the students in front of them. There are gaps between what the HSE provides and what the Department of Education provides. Often, children fall between those gaps.

I would like to focus on one thing with Ms Foley, namely, exams at second level because many issues have been raised. There is a focus on exams. The teacher has 40 minutes to deliver the programme and there can be pressure from parents about what the teacher is doing and how the targets are being met. Everything seems to come down to the junior certificate results and then, of course, the leaving results and the pressures associated with that.

Can Ms Foley expand on that and maybe feed into what we all hope, certainly from my point of view, will be a changed leaving certificate and a changed system at second level that allows the space for a young person to be themselves and not to fit into this very rigid old exam that suits some people? Of course, one knows that people that it suits tend to make the rules when they move on from second level but those who it does not suit do not tend to make the rules. Can Ms Foley expand on that and use the opportunity the committee presents to tell us from her organisation's perspective how she feels the exam system impacts on mental health and how it could be changed?