Mr. Michael Gillespie:

Everybody is teaching a curriculum. The Minister has instructed us to teach. Every teacher is teaching a new curriculum. They do not have a choice in that. Is it being resourced? Is it being supported properly? We are saying that it is in some subjects, but not all subjects are the same. That is the problem. To look at a positive example, it is proposed to introduce an oral exam in English. We absolutely agree with that proposal. We think that a different type of communication should be assessed under English. It is obvious that the SEC is not ready for that. It is obvious that the Department and teachers are not ready. Over the summer a bit of sense prevailed, and English has been delayed by a year because of the oral. That is a positive move. That is going to give us the time.

I will use accountancy as an example to make a different point. There is no point doing ledgers in the way we did it in school. It has now gone into IT. To do it in IT, it has to go into the cloud. They realised that most of the stuff cannot be done in the cloud because, as I said earlier, most schools do not have access. Accountancy had to be delayed because the infrastructure is not there. The problem I see now is that they might decide that the infrastructure can never be there. We might take a step back and end up doing it in an old-fashioned way because we do not have the infrastructure. It will be a problem if leaving certificate reform cannot be meaningful and cannot assess different things, as it is designed to do, for reasons linked to costs and resourcing. We could end up with a second-rate redevelopment because of a lack of investment. That is my biggest fear. There was a rush to put in the first tranches in order to gain momentum and be able to say that something is being done. I think science has suffered for that. I think we will regret what did with science. The AAC for science is not fit for purpose, given all the problems with AI and timing, etc., but it was rushed.