Mr. Aidan Farrell:

Absolutely. I have to say that all of the spokespersons at the time, on behalf of the various unions, would have commented on the time issue as well as the content of the paper. The second avenue through which we gain feedback on the papers is through the subject associations. These are professional associations be they of English teachers or Geography teachers. Shortly after the examination, they will canvass their teaching members on how the paper was received, how it was for their candidates and so on. That is a valuable part of the quality assurance for us in terms of whether it was a particularly challenging paper - perhaps too challenging - compared to previous years and whether there were any issues around the paper that need to feed into our framing of our marking scheme so that we will have a fair and balanced approach to the marking of the papers.