Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I will add to that. Again, the issue of students who have not engaged with schools was referenced earlier. We are told that 99% of our students have actually engaged with and returned to school so that is positive. To add to what the Minister of State said, a welfare approach has very much been taken as regards students coming back to school and encouraging them. Again, I acknowledge the terrific work that was done during lockdown to ensure students continued to engage.

Accommodation has been made in terms of the assessment of the curriculum for the leaving certificate of 2021. It would not be possible for us at this point to change the curriculum for the simple reason that different schools and teachers take different approaches to covering a course. What one teacher might have covered at a particular time, another teacher might not have covered. It would be difficult to take out chunks here and there - excuse the phrase. The accommodation has been made and notified to the schools in terms of the assessment with wider choice and so on.

I was asked whether calculated grades and continuous assessment would become part of the leaving certificate of 2021. It is our full determination that the traditional leaving certificate will be the leaving certificate that will be experienced in 2021. Notwithstanding that we are in a pandemic and so on, all of our energies are being placed towards running the system in 2021 as we have come to know it.