Mr. John Halbert:

l will be brief because I am conscious of the students outside. I wish to address two aspects. One is the speed of change and allied to that is the scale of the task. We have been here for a couple of hours and we have some sense of the divergence of views and the pressures on the system when it sets about changing.

I understand Senator Gallagher asked about the junior cycle and if we have learned something form that. Yes, we have learned the lesson that if someone says there is a simple answer they are wrong. There is no simple answer. All of the views that have been expressed here are valid and the perspectives are valid and one can hear them coming from a real sense of personal experience. That is the real story here. Whether it is form Ms Ní Chonghaile or anybody else, people are experiencing or have experienced this and we owe a responsibility to be aware of that depth of experience when we undertake reform. We must be careful that we do not respond in any kind of knee-jerk capacity to individual experiences. We must look at the system as a whole.

There are no simple solutions and there is no quick response. We have learned many things from the experience of the junior cycle. One of them is the need to establish a shared idea of what it the outcome might be and how it might look different. That is a serious issue for us as curricular developers and also for the committee members who are education partners and public representatives.

With regard to the idea that continuous assessment or any system is inherently fair, the system of education and curriculum reflects very often the society in which we live. If we have a societal change on our minds then it is certain that curriculum and assessment have a role. That is undoubted, but it cannot be seen as a replacement for a large societal change. That is a facile interpretation in many ways. I do not suggest anyone here has that interpretation but it will not work in a linear fashion. The notion that, for example, there is no ongoing assessment currently in the leaving certificate is wrong. Some 20 of the 34 subjects that are available in the leaving certificate currently have a second assessment component of some sort. It is not a case of changing everything to continuous assessment and we will solve our problems. It takes a deeper reflection than that.

I know you are under pressure, Chairman, so I will make one final comment on the notion of transition from junior cycle to senior cycle and the idea that the change that has taken place at junior cycle will somehow impede learning at senior cycle. I contest that. A child who travels through the junior cycle in its new format is a better learner. People mentioned a reflective learner and the term "mutual respect" was used. That is exactly the kind of learner that the junior cycle is seeking to encourage. When the child reaches senior cycle he or she will encounter a different kind of learning until such time as the senior cycle reform has taken place. As a better learner, having completed the junior cycle he or she will be in a better position to adapt to any kind of learning demands that are made on him or her.

It has been said that we cannot take as a given that a particular syllabus at leaving certificate promotes rote learning. Teachers of English, which was mentioned, would feel in some way disrespected by that contention. The people who teach English do not set out to teach it in a manner that promotes rote learning, rather they set out to teach it in a manner that is true to the nature of their learning. That must be recognised.