Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)

The guidance counsellor bit will be very interesting because of some of my questioning. It is not surprising that Mr. Ó Caoimh has spoken about the stress involved. We are all hearing anecdotally from nieces, nephews and our children that this is a major factor. Something has to give. You cannot have this big cliff-edge examination. There is universal acceptance of that. However, just to be contrarian for a moment, the cliff-edge leaving certificate made sure, whether it was right or wrong or stressful or not, that a huge volume of content was studied. It awarded academia. It made sure that there was a certain benchmark standard.

Let me be devil's advocate here. The curriculum has been reformed many times over. Back 100 years ago, it was needlework for girls and boys learned manual skills because that was what society was channelling them towards. Then we had the various reforms of the curriculum in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Over the years, as things have improved, we have seen slippages along the way. It is generally agreed that the standard of Irish has slipped across different generations, as have penmanship and creative writing. Critical analytical skills have probably slid back a little. Other skills have improved. Oral language skills and confidence of students have improved. Are there any dangers here, from a teacher's point of view, as we move back from this cliff edge and toward a model of continuous assessment, that we are also going to lose some of the strengths that the current leaving certificate has?