Ms Joanne Irwin:

I will make a few brief points. Like Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, I know exactly what it was like to get the junior cycle to where it is now and it is not yet fully on stream. As my colleague pointed out, it will be a number of years before we see the effect of classroom based assessments. Every subject will have two classroom based assessments taken during the year. Students will have an assessment task that is marked by the State Examinations Commission. In a way, they will have experienced a form of continuous assessment. It will take a long time to embed this in the system, which will be necessary before we make changes to the senior cycle.

On the issue of anxiety and stress, from my experience of teaching in further education where all courses are taught through continuous assessment - I have taught students aged from 16 to 83 years - certain students experienced stress more frequently in the continuous assessment model because they were anxious in any case. Rather than only experiencing it at the end of the year, these students felt anxious every time they were given an assessment. This meant they felt more anxious throughout the year. I acknowledge, however, that some students did not experience anxiety. The main issue is the CAO points race because it causes most of the stress students experience.

We need to change the whole focus on the leaving certificate result or when the leaving certificate starts. I have never yet seen a student featured on television who got their leaving certificate applied or PLC results or who completed an apprenticeship - all these areas that those of us in the education sector are told to promote but which are not promoted. So much pressure from the media and the third level sector is on going on to third level and that should not be the case.

I am totally against league tables. They measure one form of assessment and do not take the holistic learning of a student into consideration. The day of the leaving certificate results, we do not hear about the student who struggled every day to go into school, who got a D and who passed. I have had students like that and it meant more to me, and to them, than the students who got an A1 because these students were always going to get an A1. It was the student one encouraged to come in every single day who should be out there to show people what they can achieve.

Workload will be a major issue. We have a teacher supply crisis, pay discrimination and very low morale in the profession. However, they are engaging in the CPD for junior cycle, which is an extensive programme. To try to put this on top of changing the junior cycle will be the straw that breaks the camel's back for teachers. They just do not have the capacity to do it.

I welcome what Deputy Funchion said, which is that it will be assessed by the State Examinations Commission. We have huge faith in the commission. I do not know if it has the capacity or whether it would be funded to have the capacity to extend the work it does. We do not have any objection to a second assessment component if it is externally assessed by the State Examinations Commission so that it is an objective analysis of the students' work. I am not speaking on behalf of the State Examinations Commission but I would have fears about whether it would have the capacity to do it. It would certainly have the ability but the question is whether or not it has the capacity.

Regarding the Chairman's question about whether it would impact on early school leaving, a recent study by the OECD entitled, Education at a Glance, showed that Ireland has a 91% completion of upper secondary education where the EU average is 67% so we are very successful at present. I accept that if there are more second assessment components, we do not have an issue with it but it should be independently assessed by the State Examinations Commission. In fairness to the NCCA, in respect of the work it does in devising the programmes, it takes on board the views of the development groups and has more practical elements. Music for the new junior cycle is worth 30% practical while home economics is worth 50% practical.