Mr. Kieran Christie:

The pinch point I would identify is that when a path is taken and everybody can see that the path is not a particularly good one, unfortunately it can take an awful long time for the Department of education to turn it around. I will give the committee a concrete example. The Minister, to her credit, made a significant announcement at our annual conventions this year in relation to the junior cycle marking schemes. As an insufficient number of students were getting top grades at junior cycle, they changed the marking schemes this year. However, we knew that five years ago. Everybody knew that five years ago. It took five years to turn it around. My concern around the 40% issue, whether it is in maths or the sciences, is that we will go down the same road and it will be irreversible for a long period of time. In the meantime, the students will be those who suffer. To give an example with a slight digression, for the past five years until this year our counsellors were the busiest people in the school on junior cycle results day because of students crying about being unable to get top grades. Two years later, they got much brighter and brainer and got top grades at leaving certificate. It took years to turn that simple thing around. The concern around the 40% is something similar.