Dr. Harold Hislop:

It is important to emphasise that schools have made huge efforts and have learned a lot about how to operate in a Covid environment. We simply did not have that information in June and it was not safe to run the exams in the current year. Exams are an important way of assessing students. There is no doubt about that. They serve a useful purpose and they have their strengths as well as their weaknesses. As students have been preparing for doing an exam for the previous two years, it is the fairest way of assessing them. That includes the other components of the exams as well.

The Deputy asked about the long-term effects of this situation. There are obviously gaps. We have recognised already that there are gaps in students' learning and that is why the exam arrangements for next year have been altered so that students will have a greater range of choice in those examinations. They will have to cover fewer areas and yet will still be able to do the exams. We thought that was the fairest thing to do, by adjusting the assessment so that, irrespective of the order in which students had covered elements of their syllabi, they would still be able to do their exams and represent their learning fairly. The other side of it is that this whole experience has shown that if we had other episodes or modules of assessment that were properly set, moderated and examined over the course of the two-year period, we would not have been relying on a single three-hour exam that we had to cancel.

Other countries have those measures in place and they were able to cope better. That was not possible in Ireland, which is an important lesson in regard to the review of senior cycle in years to come.