Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael)
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I preface my five questions by saying that I appreciate that an extraordinary amount of work has been done in unprecedented circumstances. However, I am under siege from emails from people who have been downgraded and my questions pertain to this cohort. Based on replies to Deputy Conway-Walsh, what I hear is that the Department does not accept that there is a group of students with remarkably similar patterns of achievement who have been downgraded. What I am hearing is that this downgrading is due to an overestimation on an individual basis by teachers. This stands in stark contrast to the profiles of the schools and students. I have heard Ms Feeney say that schools know their own but not necessarily where they appear in the national average. However, if the school has a high number of H1s on a consistent year-on-year basis and suddenly it does not, I would venture to say that the national average does not apply in those instances. I am curious to know how the witnesses can make a generalisation. If they are saying it is on an individual basis and that there was overestimation, how they can say this about this cohort? I am at a loss as to how to understand that and need that clarified.

Did the Department carry out a data processing impact assessment with regard to the rights and entitlements of data subjects because there seems to be a large number of people who were denied Form A, Form B and other information when they sought it? Moreover, a number of complaints have been made to the Data Protection Commission. If there is a data processing impact assessment, has it been published or can it be published?

Regarding the exams in November, at some point in the future - perhaps in the context of the review - I would be interested in finding out the profile of the 2,800 students and how many of them are coming from schools with a historical pattern of high achievement because I would venture to say that there are quite a lot of them. These students have been disproportionately downgraded and disproportionately affected and are not in the courses they expected to be in. I am astonished that no adjustment has been made for them despite the fact that they have been out of school since March. They were promised three weeks of some time in school before they sit their exams but they have not been at that and there was no comment as to why that was the case. The timetable is not aligned to the normal June timetable. There are things like Maths 1 and 2 happening on the same day so that seems to be disproportionately affecting them as well while some of them are coping with Covid and everything else. I would like comments on how and why that was set.

Given that there are far fewer students sitting the exam in November, why will it take until the end of February before they will get their results? Those who are relying on the HPAT will only get this year's HPAT carried over into next year if they get a deferred place arising out of the leaving certificate results and the closing date for applications to the HPAT is before the results of the leaving certificate, so the timing prejudices this same group of students.

Will the terms of reference of the independent review be published and is that review merely a procedural one, as was the appeals process? In the absence of a substantive element, I believe it was not fit for purpose. Will the independent review be a substantive one as opposed to merely a procedural one?