Mr. Michael Gillespie:

The AACs are not new. A total of 28 subjects had AACs. We forget that Irish, for example, is made up of a written exam, an oral exam and an aural exam. The latter two components are worth more than 40%. There is such a component in PE. In music, 50% of marks are awarded for a performance. We know that AACs work when they are assessing something completely different from what is on the written exam.

That is why people have bought into those subjects.

On the blanket introduction of a minimum 40%, which my colleague referred to earlier, I was a maths teacher. I have no idea how you can do a project in maths, especially given, as Mr. Ó Caoimh said, we will still have to teach honours maths and ordinary level maths and may end up with a common project at AAC. I wait with bated anticipation to see how we are going to solve that problem in maths. The minimum is a problem there. There may be subjects, maths being one, that an AAC does not suit. However, on the arbitrary minimum of 40%, we took a long time to get clarity that it was not going to be a blanket 40%. We now have clarity that other subjects that were successful are going to maintain the higher grade. Music is not going to change in its guidelines, from 50%, because it works well. The problem is that all subjects are not the same in this reform and then in certain subjects that did not have an additional assessment component, such as the sciences, it is being introduced in a blanket way without significant time and resources, as we said earlier. It is not one size fits all.

We will see some subjects going through this, such as music, the modern foreign languages and Irish, but it took a while for the Department and the NCCA to come out and state - there was rumours initially that the orals and the aurals were going to be up for grabs - that they were not going to get rid of stuff that works. That reassured a lot of teachers. We have a difference in the way teachers are viewing it as well.