Mr. Oisín Hassan:

I will try to cover as much of that as I can. The CAO race is probably the bigger factor but a high-stakes examination is still one of the root causes. We are focused on rote learning. To return to Deputy Funchion's question about whether there is one thing we could look at and start to do, it is gradual reform. Certainly the experience from higher education is that the move towards continuous assessment needs to be done gradually for the benefit of an underfunded system, the staff who are involved in the CPD that is required and the students and their ability to adapt to a changing environment. We need to realise that everyone has to adapt to the move to continuous assessment because we have focused on a high-stakes examination and rote learning in the past.

To return to the point about transition, the evidence to say that a move to continuous assessment will have a positive impact on well-being is not necessarily there because we have not gone out to find that evidence. We have not done the research and we have not started to make the necessary moves towards what I would view as continuous assessment to start to see the benefit of that. I draw members' attention to the transition report from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education which concluded that there was no link between academic performance in the CAO and the ability of the student to successfully transition and not struggle. Students struggled across the board with the transition, particularly in that first academic semester and the first year. We know that drop out at that level is around one in six. The majority of students will drop out in first year so transition is a big issue.